What! are the ladies of your land so 66 From She answer'd, "then ye know th "The climax of his age! as tho' there One rose in all the world, your Highness that, He worships your ideal": she replied: "We scarcely thought in our own hall to hear This barren verbiage, current among men, Light coin, the tinsel clink of compli ment. Your flight from out your bookless wilds would seem As arguing love of knowledge and of power; Your language proves you still the child. Indeed, We dream not of him: when we set our hand To this great work, we purposed with ourself Never to wed. You likewise will do 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; Not for three years to cross the liberties; 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, Of Agrippina. Dwell with these, and lose Convention, sinco to look on noble Makes noble thro' the sensuous organ ism 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 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 That sun their milky bosoms on the thatch, A patient range of pupils; she herself And on the hither side, or so she look'd, Of twenty summers. At her left, a child, In shining draperies, headed like a star, Her maiden babe, a double April old, 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" Said Cyril. "O hush, hush!" and she began. "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 That lay at wine with Lar and Lucumo; Ran down the Persian, Grecian, Ro man lines Of empire, and the woman's state in each, How far from just; till warming with her theme She fulmined out her scorn of law Salique And little-footed China, touch'd on Mahomet With much contempt, and came to chivalry: When some respect, however slight, was paid To woman, superstition all awry: However then commenced the dawn: a beam Had slanted forward, falling in a land Of promise; fruit would follow. Deep, indeed, Their debt of thanks to her who first had dared To leap the rotten pales of prejudice, Disyoke their necks from custom, and Wo turn'd to go, out Cyril took the Push'd her flat hand against his face And thus our conference closed. The grave Professor. On the lecture The circle rounded under female hands e lectura classic lecture, rich in sentiment, let hooded Doctors, elegies And quoted odes, and jewels five- That on the stretch'd forefinger of all Sparkle for ever: then we dipt in all The star, the bird, the fish, the shell, Electric, chemic laws, and all the rest, And whatsoever can be taught and known; Till like three horses that have broken fence, And glutted all night long breast-deep We issued gorged with knowledge, and "Why, Sirs, they do all this as well as What think you of it, Florian? do I chase The substance or the shadow? will it hold? I have no sorcerer's malison on me, Flatter myself that always everywhere Are castles shadows? Three of them? The sweet proprietress a shadow? If Shall those three castles patch my tat |