X.

Eons of wrong ere history was born,
With added ages passed in slight and scorn.
Maintained the chains of primal womanhood,
And clogged in turn man's power of greater good;
Egypt or Greece in vain sought heavenly light
While woman's soul was held from equal flight, —
Her path confined by man to sordid end,
As subjugated wife, or hireling transient friend.

XI.

Marriage — which might have been a mateship sweet,
Where equal souls in hallowed converse meet,
Each aiding each the higher truths to find.
And raising body to the plane of mind, —
Man's baser will restrained to lower grade.
And woman's share a brainless bondage made;
Her only hope of thought or learning wide,
Some freer lot to seek than yoke forlorn of bride.

XII.

Yet, as hetaira, — comrade, chambermate, —
(The ambiguous word bespoke her dubious state).
She, craving mental food, might but be guest
By paying with her body for the quest;
Conceding that, might lead a learned life, —
A licence vetoed to the legal wife, —
Might win great wealth, or build a lasting fame,
Not due to her the guilt that left the tinge of shame.
 

XIII.
What guilt was there, apportion it aright
To him who fixed the gages of the fight;
Blame man, who, reckless of the woman's fate,
In greed for meaner pleasure lost the great;
Blame him, the vaunted sage, who knew her mind
Peer to his own in skill and wit refined.
Yet left the after-ages to bemoan
The waste of woman worth that dawned and die
unknown.
 

XIV.

And deep the shame on man's insensate heart
For later woman doomed to hideous part;
Poor lostling, bowed with worse than brutal woes, —
To her not even dealt the brute's repose;
Her sweetness sullied, and her frame disgraced,
Soul scarce might light her temple fair defaced, —
Its chastest sanctities coerced to give
For painful bread to eat, for piteous chance to live.
 

XV.
While such her fate in lands of cultured creed,
Judge woman's griefs with man of barbarous breed;
Slave to his lust, and tiller of his soil,
Crippled and crushed by cruelty and toil;
Yet still her heart a gentle mien essayed,
By deeper passion, holier impulse, swayed;
Care for her wretched offspring rarely swerved.
And mother-love alone the infant oft preserved.

XVI.

Thus woman's life, in low or high estate,
Man fettered with a more than natural weight
Of sexual function, — disproportioned theme
And single basis in his female scheme;
He strove to quench her flash of quicker fire.
That crossed his lordship or his low desire;
Her one permitted end to serve his race.
Her individual soul forbidden breathing place.

XVII.

Scarce other seemed that soul than sentient tomb
Of human energy debarred to bloom;
Her spirit, pining in its durance drear,
Leaves legacy of many a burning tear
For aspirations crushed, and aims denied,
And instincts thwarted by man's purblind pride;
Her every wish made subject to the nod
Of him whose mad conceit proclaimed himself her
God.
 

XVIII.

So stood at halt, through years of sterile change,
His narrowed brain and her restricted range;
And man intelligent and woman free.
Was union which the world had yet to see;
For time to come reserved the golden sight
Of glorious harvest from the natural right.
To her as amply as to him assigned
To compass power unknown in body and in mind.
 

XIX.

Happy the epoch destined to show
What force of good from that free fate shall flow;
The artificial limits to efface
Of laws and forms that womanhood debase;
Even our own imperfect hour may prove
The ecstasy of earnest souls that move
In dual union of unselfish strife
To reach by mutual love to true and equal life.
 

XX.

Yet slow, so slowly, gleams the gathering light,
And lingers still the hovering shade of night;
Though part undone the wrong that we confess,
Repentance cannot instant bring redress;
Nor woman, tortured by her thraldom long,
At once stand forth emancipate and strong;
Her pain persistent, though she calm suppress
Her rancour for the past, with sweet forgivingness.
 

XXI.

For carnal servitude left cruel stain,
And galls that fester from the fleshly chain;
Unhealed the scars of man's distempered greed,
The wounds of blind injustice still they bleed;
Recurrent suffering lets her not forget
The aimless payments of a dismal debt, —
Survival from dim age of man's abuse
Of functions immature, profaned by savage use.
 

XXII.

Her girlhood's helpless years through cycles long
Had been a martyrdom of sexual wrong,
For little strength or choice might child oppose
To shield herself from force of sensual foes;
Impending motherhood might win no rest
Or refuge sacred from the satyr quest;
Unripe maternity, untimely birth.
The woman's constant dole in those dark days of
earth.

XXIII.

Action repeated tends to rhythmic course,
And thus the mischief, due at first to force,
Brought cumulative sequence to the race,
Till habit bred hereditary trace;
On woman falls that heritage of woe,
And e'en the virgin feels its dastard blow, —
For, long ere fit to wield maternal cares.
Abnormal fruits of birth her guiltless body bears.



XXIV.

Misread by man, this sign of his misdeed
Was held as symptom of her nubile need,
And on through history's length her tender age
Has still been victim to his adult rage;
He, by his text, with irony serene,
Banned her resultant " manner " as " unclean ";
The censure base upon himself recoils.
Yet leaves the woman wan and cumbered in his toils.

XXV.

Vicarious punishment for manhood's crime
Takes grievous toll of all her active prime;
The hap, in educated woman's fate,
Is instinct with antipathy and hate;
Reason confirming tells, no honest claim
Could ever cause such gust of inward shame.
Nor act of normal wont might man blaspheme
To make of Nature's need a vile opprobrious theme.

XXVI.

Thoughts like to these are breathings of the truth
To whoso ponders deep the tale of ruth;
The futile mannish pleas that would explain
The purport of her periodic pain,
All bear unconscious witness to the wrong
In blindness born, in error fostered long, —
The spurious function growing with the years,
Till almost natural use the morbid mode appears.
 

XXVII.

Grievous the hurt to woman, which to right
Is instant duty of our stronger sight;
From off her weary shoulders, bruised and worn.
To lift the cross in longtime misery borne;
Until, reintegrate in frame and mind,
A speedy restitution she shall find,
From every trammel of man's mastery freed,
Nor held by his behest from fullest life and deed.

XXVIII.

And soon may pass her suffering, for the ill
By man begot lies subject to our skill;
All human malady may be allayed
With human forethought, human action's aid;
Ours then the fault, since, given in our hand
Is power the evil hazard to command;
For Nature, kindly wise our woes to shape,
n very pang of pain both prompts and points escape.
 

XXIX.

So woman shall her own redemption gain,
Instructed by the sting of bootless pain;
With Nature ever helpful to retrieve
The injury we heedlessly achieve,
From seed of act, by recent woman sown,
Already guerdon rich in hope is shown; —
Such faculty her new-found presence decks,
The sage physician, she, and saviour of her sex.

XXX.

With purer phase of life proves woman less
The burden of the wasting weariness;
And thus, in rank refined or rude have grown
Maidens in whom the weakness was not known;
Hale woman and true mother have they been,
Yet never have the noisome habit seen:
Not to neglectful man to greatly care
How such immunity all womanhood might share.
XXXI.

Her intellect alert the harm shall heal,
And ways of wholesomeness and strength reveal;
The saving truth she wins with studious thought
More swiftly to her daughter shall be taught, —
How body still is supple unto mind.
By dint of soul is fleshly form inclined,
And woman^s will shall work of man atone.
The deed his darkness wrought be by her light
undone.

XXXII.

No longer drilled deformity to nurse,
And woo, when slow to appear, the absent curse,
Her counter-effort, helped by Nature's grace,
Shall quell the " custom's " last abhorrent trace;
Its morbid usurpation shall refute, —
Not more to woman natural than to brute; —
A needless noyance with a baseless claim,
The lingering mark of man's unthinking guilt and
shame.
 

XXXIII.

Her body, saved from enervating drain,
Shall lend a newer vigour to the brain;
Wide shall she roam in realms of untold thought,
Which ages since her shackled instinct sought;
For oft her prison had the yearnings heard.
In murmurings scarce rendered into word; —
Promptings which man suspicious strove to choke,
Lest that her soul should rise and break his time-
worn yoke.

XXXIV.

For autocrats of old, with treacherous guile,
Had bribed the villain's soul by sensual wile;
To meanest man a lower drudge assigned, —
With gift of female thrall cajoled the hind;
The stolid churl his servitude forgave
Whilst he in turn was master to a slave;
Through every rank the sexual serfdom ran,
And woman's life was bound in vassalage to man.

XXXV.

Then, fearing that the slave herself might guess
The knavery of her forced enchainedness,
A subtle fiction mannish brain designed
To dominate her conscience and her mind, —
Inhuman dogmas did his genius frame,
Investing them with sanctimonious name
Of  "woman's duty "; and the fetish base
E'en to this reasoned day uplifts its impious face.

XXXVI.

By cant condoned, man fashioned woman's "sphere,"
And mapped out " natural " bounds to her career;
His sapience-^should she dare any deed
In contravention of his code — decreed
On soul or body penalties condign.
In part dubbed civil law, and part divine:
Misguided man, — confused in self-deceit
His unisexual wit and pious pretext meet.

XXXVII.
Obeisance yet his caste of sex demands; —
In legislative script the verbiage stands
How lowest boor is lordly " baron " styled,
And highest bride as common " feme " reviled;
The tardier fear that grants the clown a share
In his own governance, denies it her;
And British matrons are, by man-made rules.
In solemn statute ranked with infants, felons, fools.

XXXVIII.

The crass injustice early man displayed,
His own crude infancy of brain betrayed;
His riper judgment scorns the childish use.
And cries to all his bygone freaks a truce;
Enactments that long blemished legal page
Shall fade as figments of a foolish age,
Till saner years have every bond erased
Which selfish law of man on life of woman placed.

XXXIX.
Till like with him in human right she stands,
Her will an equal power of rule commands;
Her voice, in council and in senate heard.
To stern debate brings harmonising word;
In mutual stress each sex the other cheers,
Since one are made their hopes and one their fears;
" Self-reverent each, and reverencing each," —
The theme that truer man and freer woman teach.

XL.

For but a slave himself must ever be.
Till she to shape her own career be free; —
Free from all uninvited touch of man,
Free mistress of her person’s sacred plan;
Free human soul; the brood that she shall bear,
The first — the truly free, to breathe our air;
From woman slave can come but menial race.
The mother free confers her freedom and her grace.
 

XLI.
By her the progress of our future kind,
Their stalwart body and their spacious mind;
For, folded in her form each human mite
Has its first home, its sustenance and light;
Hers the live warmth that fans its spirit flame,
Her generous sap supplies its fleshly frame.
And e'en the juice, — the fullborn infant's food,
Is yet a blanched form of woman's living blood.

XLII.

Strange wisdom by her unkenned craft is taught
While yet the embryo in her womb is wrought;
For, long ere entering on our tumult rife.
It learns from her the needful art of life;
Unconscious teacher, she, yet all she knows
Of dark experience to her infant flows.
And brands him, ere he rest upon her knee.
Offshoot of slavish race, not scion of the free.
 

XLIII.
To either sex the bondage and the pain,
They seek to live a freeman's life in vain;
For man or woman can but act the part,
When 'tis not freeborn blood that fills the heart:
Strive as he may, the modern man, at best,
Is tyrant, differing somewhat from the rest;
Nor woman thraldom-bred can surely know
Where lies her richest gift, or how its wealth to show.

XLIV.

Thus learn we that in woman rendered free
Is raised the rank of all humanity;
The despot is the fullfruit of the slave; —
To form the freeman, equable and brave,
Habit of freedom must spontaneous come
As life itself, and from the selfsame womb;
Life, liberty, and love, — lien undefiled, —
The freeborn mother's heirloom to her freeborn child.

XLV.
So shall her noble issue, maid or boy,
With equal freedom equal fate enjoy;
Together reared in purity and truth,
Through plastic childhood and retentive youth;
Their mutual sports of sinew and of brain
In strength alike the sturdy comrades train;
Of differing sex no thought inept intrudes,
Their purpose calmly sure all errant aim excludes.