At those high words, we, conscious of ourselves, Perused the matting; then an officer Rose up, and read the statutes, such as these : Not for three years to correspond with home; We enter'd on the boards: and Now' she cried 'Ye are green wood, see ye warp not. Look, our hall ! Our statues!-not of those that men desire, Sleek Odalisques, or oracles of mode, Nor stunted squaws of West or East; but she The foundress of the Babylonian wall, The Carian Artemisia strong in war, The Rhodope that built the pyramid, Clelia, Cornelia, with the Palmyrene Makes noble thro' the sensuous organism That which is higher. Leave us: you may go : To-day the Lady Psyche will harangue The fresh arrivals of the week before; For they press in from all the provinces, And fill the hive.' She spoke, and bowing waved Dismissal back again we crost the court To Lady Psyche's: as we enter'd in, There sat along the forms, like morning doves Erect behind a desk of satin-wood, A quick brunette, well-moulded, falcon-eyed, Aglaïa slept. We sat the Lady glanced : Then Florian, but no livelier than the dame That whisper'd' Asses' ears' among the sedge, 'My sister.' 'Comely too by all that 's fair' O hush, hush!' and she began. Said Cyril. This world was once a fluid haze of light, Till toward the centre set the starry tides, And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast The planets: then the monster, then the man; Tattoo'd or woaded, winter-clad in skins, Raw from the prime, and crushing down his mate; As yet we find in barbarous isles, and here Among the lowest.' Thereupon she took A bird's-eye-view of all the ungracious past; Glanced at the legendary Amazon As emblematic of a nobler age ; Appraised the Lycian custom, spoke of those That lay at wine with Lar and Lucumo; Ran down the Persian, Grecian, Roman lines Of empire, and the woman's state in each, And little-footed China, touch'd on Mahomet However then commenced the dawn: a beam Of promise; fruit would follow. Deep, indeed, To leap the rotten pales of prejudice, Disyoke their necks from custom, and assert None lordlier than themselves but that which made Woman and man. She had founded; they must build Here might they learn whatever men were taught: Let them not fear: some said their heads were less : Some men's were small; not they the least of men ; For often fineness compensated size: D Besides the brain was like the hand, and grew With using; thence the man's, if more was more ; He took advantage of his strength to be First in the field: some ages had been lost; Was longer; and albeit their glorious names Nor those horn-handed breakers of the glebe, But Homer, Plato, Verulam; even so With woman and in arts of government Elizabeth and others; arts of war The peasant Joan and others; arts of grace Sappho and others vied with any man: And, last not least, she who had left her place, And bow'd her state to them, that they might grow To use and power on this Oasis, lapt In the arms of leisure, sacred from the blight Of ancient influence and scorn.' |