At those high words, we conscious of ourselves, Rose up, and read the statutes, such as these : Not for three years to correspond with home; Not for three years to speak with any men And many more, which hastily subscribed, 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 That taught the Sabine how to rule, and she Semi The foundress of the Babylonian wall, The Carian Artemisia strong in war, The Rhodope, that built the pyramid, Of Agrippina. Dwell with these, and lose Convention, since to look on noble forms Makes noble thro' the sensuous organism That which is higher. O lift your natures up: Embrace our aims: work out your freedom. Girls, Knowledge is now no more a fountain seal'd : Drink deep, until the habits of the slave, The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite And slander, die. Better not be at all Than not be noble. Leave us you may go : To-day the Lady Pysche 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 There sat along the forms, like morning doves A patient range of pupils; she herself Erect behind a desk of satin-wood, A quick brunette, well-moulded, falcon-eyed, And on the hither side, or so she look'd, In shining draperies, headed like a star, '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; -dyed 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: 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 And not the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay, Nor those horn-handed breakers of the glebe, But Homer, Plato, Verulam; even so With woman and in hearts 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, |