er advantage in the after time.
We write "anathema" above the gates
Of what we choose to call "barbaric clime;"
And yet, the blinded goddess often waits
To gather wisdom at _her_ bare, black feet
Which, bruised and blistered, tread the narrow way
To where the graces uninspired meet
And superstition's night breaks into day.

They held the bond of family and home
As firmly as more favored nations hold;
Their homes were castles, where no man could come
Without the potent ses-a-me of gold.
The wealthy pluralized the name of wife
(As many Bible patriarchs once did),
Their virtue was the average of life--
There were excrescences not easy hid.
Yet woman was more near her half of earth
Than she had reached in most of Christendom.
She held her value and could claim her worth;
Not bartered with the readiness of some
Self-styled enlightened. Much is to be learned
In corners of the earth that we call "dark,"
Where jewels are for centuries inurned
That torches of enlightenment may tarnish with a spark.

We lay rude hands on temples not our own,
Nor little heed the human souls enshrined;
The sacred crevice of each hard-marked stone
But coldly cover with the virdict, "blind."
God help us, that we point a hand more pure,
And raise the casement with a grander trust;
The hands that lift it must indeed be clean,
Or comes the humbling challenge, "Is it just?"
One "great white throne" shall judge us, one and all;
One great white Hand shall hold the scales of fate,
Or clothed in light, or covered with a pall,
We tread the way through one eternal gate.
God grant the temples we so rudely spoil,
May not accuse us when we stand alone!
But hearts are human things, and they do coil
The infinite in blindness. Not a groan
Escapes the index of the Father Son.
A child in blindness still is but a child,
And held with greater yearning to be won.
Our cold, hard hands cannot be reconciled
To one warm Heart that throbs for all mankind,
And covers, with a commo