lder:
Had in Pallas Athene example
To make womanhood stronger and bolder.
But the temples are broken and plundered,
Sacred altars profanely o'erthrown;
Where the oracle trembled and thundered,
Are a cavern, a fount, and a stone.

Yet we would of the Christ hear the story,
'Twas familiar in days that are ended;
His humility, purity, glory,
Are they not into heaven ascended?
We see naught but scorning and hating;
We hear naught but threats and contemning:
For your Christian is good and berating,
And your sinner is first in condemning.

Should you say that the Christ would reprove us,
If we found him and told him our trouble?
It is fearful with no one to love us,
And our pain and despair growing double.
It is mad'ning to feel we're excluded
From the homes of the mothers that bore us;
And that man, by no false arts deluded,
May enter unchallenged before us.

It is hard to be humble when trodden;
We cannot be meek when oppressed;
Nor pure while our souls are made sodden
With loathing that can't be confessed;
Or true, while our bread and our shelter
By a lying pretence is obtained--
Deceived, in deception we welter;
By a touch are we evermore stained.

O hard lot of woman! the creature
Of a creature whose God is asleep,
Or gone on a journey. You teach her
She was made to sin, suffer, and weep;
We wait for a new revelation,
We cry for a God of our own;
O God unrevealed, bring salvation,
From our necks lift the collar of stone!

REPOSE.

I lay me down straight, with closed eyes,
And pale hands folded across my breast,
Thinking, unpained, of the sad surprise
Of those who shall find me thus fall'n to rest;
And the grief in their looks when they learn no endeavor,
Can disturb my repose--for my sleep is forever.
I know that a smile will lie hid in my eyes,
Even a soft throb of joy stir the pulse in my breast,
When they sit down to mourning, with tears and with sighs,
And shudder at death, which to me is but rest.

So sweet to be parted at once from our pain;
To put off our care as a robe that is worn;
To drop like a link broken out of a chain,
And be lost in the sands by Time's tide overborne:
And to know at my loss all the wildest regretting,