The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

When this strange stormy nineteenth century closes,
Reaching the goal towards which its wild wheels move,
Though earth's green banks will bear their countless roses
Will there be women born whom man may love?

There will be—doubtless—brains so full of learning
That in them will be room for nought beside:
Will there be eyes to awake the old love-yearning,
Lips sweet as those for whose sake men have died?

In Shakespeare's England—“merry,” then they named it!
In truth it was another realm than ours;
Woman's unsexed mad champions had not claimed it,
Robbing the soul of love, the land of flowers.

No women-prophets then had risen to teach us
That man is wholly sensual, wholly vile;
Eager with frown and stamp of foot to reach us
(Though woman once could conquer with a smile!)

The platforms trembled not—in happier ages—
At the impassioned sisters' manly tread:
No bands of wild-eyed youths and hoary sages
Followed supine, while martial woman led.

Man had not cast his sword away—he grasped it—
Nor had he set his helm on woman's brow;
'Twas on his own till Mona Caird unclasped it;
He was not swordless, helmless then, as now.

He had not learned that occult lore reposes
On woman's lips; his earlier creed was this—
That Nature made them when she made the roses,
And that they preach most purely in a kiss.

Still of love's bark man was the patient steerer:
He had not, cowardly when the waves arose
And when the threatening towering rocks loomed nearer,
Let woman steer the doomed bark as she chose.

A woman's “mission” was the mission ample
And all divine, and wholly, nobly, sweet—
To lift by love and exquisite example,
Not to downtrample with exultant feet.

A woman's “right” was that one right unmeasured,
The right to give, the “mission” to be won:
That right supreme shall by man's heart be treasured
As long as God's hand treasures stars and sun.

To-day the women calculate and ponder,
And calculation's woman's deadliest sin
—“Is love's crown wrought of flawless gold, I wonder?
If I give so much, how much shall I win?

“Is this kiss worth a brooch, that kiss a carriage?
What is the value in jewels of my embrace?
How may I compass best a wealthy marriage?
What is the market value of my face?”

Oh, not in ways like these did England's daughters
Aid England's sons to found an empire wide
As the moon's silent path across the waters,
An endless realm in which the sun took pride:

Nay! love and beauty were the themes inspiring
The poets who at England's dawning rose
—There were no lecture-rooms, mayhap, for hiring,
Where woman might descant upon her woes.

In Shakespeare's England Mona Cairds were powerless;
No Westminster Review his eyes had seen:
Yet was that grand age songless, loveless, flowerless?
Whence sprang that deathless cry of Egypt's queen?

“Husband, I come!” Was that cry not inspired
By English wifehood, death-defying, true?
Must not some living Desdemona have fired
The heart conceiving and the hand that drew?

Ophelia, Portia, Juliet,—names unnumbered
Leap to the lips or linger on the tongue.
Their models woke, and lived and loved—then slumbered,
But still song's magic makes their sweetness young.

Was woman's soul inferior then—inferior
Her grace unspeakable of brow and hand?
Was she not, being unconscious, far superior
To those whose wild shrieks tire a weary land?

When Raphael made fair womanhood immortal,
When Titian on the undying canvas wrought,
Woman was goddess at the blue heaven's portal,
But now her forehead wrinkles with its thought.

She thinks too much to-day, and loves too little,
She who was once the priestess of the heart.
The chains of love the thinker weaves are brittle,
But love weaves chains death's hand shall fail to part.

In ages too remote for man's frail counting
Some youth, it may be, pausing on his oar
Watched a girl-swimmer the blue waves surmounting,
Bound for the green-robed silver-girdled shore:

He, ere his dream of matchless beauty perished,
Speaking impassioned to the folk at home,
Launched the fair legend that all time has cherished
Of Venus born from the enchanted foam.

From that one woman whom the waters tossing
Steered shoreward gently in some Southern clime
Sprang the strange Venus-legend, all engrossing,
Whose sweet resistless charm will baffle time.

But who from women of to-day will gather
A legend glorious as that tale of old,
Legend to which the fiery sun was father,
Flaming from heaven, arrayed in cloudless gold?

Not love, but Hebrew and Greek and physiology,
And scientific secrets deep and strange,
Astronomy, and Chinese, and conchology
—Through all these regions woman now must range.

And yet in one young cheek's soft merry dimple
There lies the witchery most potent far:
One girl's glance, full of trustful love and simple,
Sparkles more sweetly than the evening star.

O women of England, new stars gleam and glisten,
The moulding of the future as of the past
Lies in your hands—yet, if it may be, listen
To one voice from the century closing fast:

Heed your own hearts, not this wail never-ending
From over-burthened souls who have gone astray;
Love as of old from the bright skies is bending;
Speak ye his message—man's heart will obey.

The women-teachers of to-day are flightiest
Of all who have taught—remember, for your part,
That youth will gain its impulse purest, mightiest,
Never from woman's brain—from woman's heart.

The future may be dark—man's soul climbs slowliest
Of all things living towards the starlit skies:
Yet, ever, youth will learn its lessons holiest
Not from the stars, but from a woman's eyes.