he poet's ideal, with new
powers and relations illustrating its harmony in and fitness for the
world that is purified and sanctified by its presence. There to my eye

'Her shape arises:
She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever;
The gross and soiled she moves among do not make her gross and soiled;
She knows the thoughts as she passes--nothing is concealed from her;
She is none the less considerate or friendly therefore;
She is the best beloved--it is without exception--she has no reason to
fear, and she does not fear;
Oaths, quarrels, hiccupped songs, proposals, smutty expressions, are idle
to her as she passes;
She is silent--she is possessed of herself--they do not offend her;
She receive them as the laws of nature receives them--she is strong;
She, too, is a law of nature--there is no law stronger than she is.'

I look beneath, the ethereal drapery of qualities in which the prophetic
imagination has clothed her, and central to them all I find a new
phenomenon--the latest of the ages--TRUE WOMANHOOD. From this proceeds
the veiled glory hitherto seen but by poet's eye--not far hence to be
felt and known of all. For it is no longer the vision of a distant and
dim land, separated from this actual present by a fathomless abyss. Out
of the yawning chasm that has divided that from this there rise to-day,
clear, shining, visible to open eyes, the everlasting pillars of truth,
which will shortly bridge it and make broad the road thither, so that
neither he who walks straight with exact step between the pales of
science, nor he outside wending, heedless, with wide-wandering eyes and
feet who stumbles along, shall miss it.

A being planted above man, taking root where he blooms, in the pure
affections, flowering in the high airs which he dreams of but sees not,
or sees only in moments of inspiration from her--a being, who, more
complex on her physical side, is therefore more affluent on her
spiritual--who, from the established premises of science, demands not
new, but the very largest deductions to reach the borders of her life--a
being whose support with the earth-life is widened and strengthened by
each added organ, function, susceptibility--whose divine support is
opened, established, confirmed in increased degrees over man's by each
womanly inlet to the spiritual nature--I see such a being irradiating
the future years and paths of my race, and my soul grows strong and glad
at