What is this power maleficent,
Wherefrom the Knights of St. Stephen's are bent
To deliver the souls of the innocent?

They had done with the Highlander's feather bonnet,
Having spoken weightily upon it;
A fever due to our luckless trade
With Madagascar had been allayed;
But not at the call of the purse or the feather
The Knights, all one-minded, were banded together
Oblivious of party; not even the Bill
For giving their own with a flourish to wives
Had sufficed with such generous ardour to fill
Their speeches, or knit them in word and in will,
As this question which clearly cut into their lives.

This is no frivolous matter,—a topic
Which touches them nearer than the Tropic,—
Nearer than houses, dearer than lands;
Here are their little ones thrown on their hands
To guard from the ravage or something most savage;
To save from some truculent claimant that stands
And faces the man with its shameless demands;
That has crouched by the hearth
And sprung up on the path,
That would suddenly open its reptile jaws,
That would stealthily seize in its cat-like claws;
Some lurking evil, some hooded snake
That watches the hour and the moment to slake
Its wrath on the man and his motherless brood
Having no part in either.

I stood,
I waited, I watched as they took up the word,
And I deemed it some tale of romance that I heard,—
Some olden story
Of dragon hoary,—
Of fabulous monster that over-bold
Had come from despoiling the lambs in the fold
To threaten the lambs with the tender blue eyes,
The tearful blue eyes and the fleeces of gold;
But I saw that the speakers believed in their cries,
Were sure that some monster was lying in wait
For the children of men, and were keen to abate
Of this power perverse the inordinate claim—
To hush and to crush and expose it to shame,
Or to bone it, and render invertebrate.

What is this terror, this name of fear
That they shun to pronounce, that I tremble to hear?
The name of this vampire that fastens and thrives
On the tender young lives
Of the children,—this foe whose mere shadow appals,—
The name of this Spoiler for justice that calls,
And that justice, as such, has no choice but to smother,
To stamp out the life of, or build up in walls?—
God comfort the children—this fiend is—their Mother!

Yes, they give up its title, but publish no deed
Of the malice supernal wherefor it must bleed.
What are the crimes that have cost so dear?
You have shown much panic, but little proof;
There are voices that speak on the woman's behoof;—
Knights of St. Stephen's, is it clear
That your foe is more than a shadowy fear?
If so dim and dateless the woman's crime,
Let us find her track on the path of time.

She has come from far, she has journeyed slowly,
Her lot was hard, her state was lowly;
Though she stands to-day and asks in her pride
For an equal place by her partner's side,—
Though she claims that none have a right to wrest
The child from the freehold of her breast,—
Holding the larger human need,
The need of an infant for a mother,
The woman who bore it and no other,
More than all niceties of creed,—
This fair pretender has been a squaw
With little to hope or of love or of law,
Has served in the ruder times as a beast
Of burthen, and still in the sun-stricken East
Is kept in a cage, being rated as yet
Little more than a bird, or a marmozet;
She has come on her way through much dishonour,
Hers the pity, not hers the blame,
Hers the sorrow, but whose the shame
If she bear some marks of the slave upon her?

As pilgrim of progress the woman is late,
But her tardy arrival is due to the weight
Of the treasure consigned to her tenderer care,
Of the scorn of her efforts which bade her despair;—
Though the scorn be lived down, still the cost of endeavour
The high trust of nature must double for ever.

What share is this claimant's in those whom the state
Would guard from a love it holds direr than hate?
Is she here but to fashion and bring to the birth
The seed of man's sowing,—to bear, like the earth,
Which needs not the pity we give to the brute,
Being haply insensate—her perilous fruit?
Not so, for she suffers; dear God, she can feel!
And the bone of her bone which you take, and appeal
To your man-mongered statutes, is hers in a sense
Which can never be known save for this thing alone:
The child which is borne at her body's expense.

A growing burthen is thus her share,
Present labour, and after care;
The prodigal need to give of her best,
To squander herself through the live-long hours;
A sacrifice of perennial birth,
A bondage binding her soul to earth,
Keeping it down with a chain of flowers;
A swift life-current that sets to her breast
And leaves her happy, and dispossessed,
With fading beauty and 'minished powers;
A tender torment, a priceless pain,
A very passion of fond unrest,—
Such is the loss, and such the gain
Of the woman whom love has crowned and blest.

This her portion; and what is assigned
To the abler body, the master mind?
What unto hers his share in the plan
Which nature, our mother,
Like many another
Who favours her sons, has required of the man?

A moment from memory even to pass
As the dew from the flower, the breath from the glass;
He loves, and love changes in nothing his state,
He is free to depart, he is clogged by no weight;
Love wears not for him the stern aspect of Fate.
Then speak; what evil beneath the sun
Has your life's co-partner, the woman, done,
That you take possession
By brute aggression
Of that which is in a sense unknown
To all things else the woman's own?
Hers by a rule which goes beyond
All other rule: a nature-bond
Compared with which the titled wealth
Of men is as the merest stealth.
Why for her must there be no right
But the man's gloved hand in its feudal might?
Why on this shore where breath so free
Is drawn 'neath the cincture of the sea,
Should the mother's tender heart and hands
Alone be subject to cruel bands?
How with a human right at stake
Should an old world code still dare to break
The word of Life, with its holy trust
In woman, and by an act unjust
Wrest from the stainless wife and mild,
When forced from love of life at peace
From shameless wrong to seek release,
Her more than equal share in the child?
Why in this land of even measure
Must only the woman hold a treasure
Nursed into life beneath her heart
And of her dearest self a part,
As granted at a tyrant's pleasure
And subject to unrighteous seizure?

Such wrong has moved to manful shame
Some judges fit to bear the name,
Who boldly dare to find a flaw
Where right may creep within the law!

All ye who sit in close debate,
Who hold and still withhold our fate
While wearily we stand and wait,
Why take the law yourselves, and place
Your needier partners under grace?
Ye fervent advocates of light,
Retained to vindicate the right,—
With nothing proven but your fears,
No witnesses but women's tears,
Why have you seized upon and hurled
This woman's charter in the dust,
How dared from out the pale to thrust
And so to outlaw half the world!

Knights of St. Stephen's, are you met
Your bond upon the sea to set?
Think you with overmastering pride
To turn from us the rising tide
Of justice and of liberty?
You will not turn it, valiant knights,
Whose fathers wrung their chartered rights
From wrongful hands at Runnymead;
Our rights to us stand far more near,
And love for them will cast out fear;
Not profitless our hearts will bleed
For ever, love shall make us free!
Your faith is ours, and yours our creed;
Your mothers, sisters, mates are we!

Think of it well, ye men of might,
Who sit and watch by day and night
The signs of coming change, and see
Through that which is, what is to be.
You note the part and not the whole,
You scorn our impact overmuch,
And do not feel the finer touch
Which helps the future to control.

Nor are you wise to circumvent
The friends of custom and of rule,
While rashly leaving to their bent
The lawless, the incontinent,
The weak and too-confiding fool.

Behold the wife constrained to part
Her life in twain; in legal bands
Idly eating her busy heart,
Vainly wringing her empty hands;
Wearing out in prayer the knees
Which should have been her children's lap,
Spoiled of all but her rueful ease,
A moaning creature in a trap;
Sighing that hers had been the state
Of the mother who never knew married mate,
So free to cherish and eke provide
For the infant by whom her hands are tied;—
Free if the milk should fail in her breast,
And she and the child be too hard prest,
To hurry it into the grave to rest!
O ye who loose, O ye who bind,
Your tender mercies are not kind!

Who breaks must pay; that law is just,
And she who breaks the double trust
Of man and nature, needs must feel
The double pang which both can deal;
The Christ could write her sin in dust,
And make her judges share her shame,
But not the Christ Himself could heal
The wounds with which the woman slays
The faith of men whom she betrays;
Annulled for her the common claim;
Unless high pity make appeal
Her heart must break upon the wheel.

But, think you that the love whose root
In woman's heart has borne for fruit
All that we strive for, know, or feel
Of best, will bear the bruising heel
For ever, or that deep and pure,
Knowing itself, it will endure
To hold no part in love secure,
But just the portion of the brute?

There stands a cloud, a little cloud
Upon the brink of coming time,
Its morning presence scarce avowed,
But gathering to the noonday prime;
No bigger than a man's closed hand,
It darkens still, and still it grows,
And it in opening on the land,
As time its fulness shall disclose,
Will flood the world in every part,
Grown to the size of woman's heart.

With no vain-glorious defiance
She comes to claim her human right,—
With heart to feel, no heart to fight,
Or hand to wring enforced compliance;
Only the noblest love a space
Will haply seek some safer place,
Which while the altars, bright of old
With purest flame, will languish cold,—
The waves of passion turn, and roll
A deviate current, to the pole;
The baffled mother instinct use
Its means to wider ends, diffuse
Its benedictions in a sphere
Where larger love, and not so near,
Will cost the human heart less dear.

This woman's love released, unbound,
Turned thankless out from home and hearth,
May reach of earth the farthest bound,
May lighten many an unknown path;
But not unfelt will be the cost
Of that hard dealing which has lost
From homely use but for a day
The best of love, and sent away
To sublimate itself in space
The force which should sublime the race.

Knights of St. Stephen's, mark the cloud,
The little cloud which shows on high,—
No thunder pealing long and loud,
No flash electric cleaves the sky;
But still the cloud which means the storm,
The little cloud that takes the form
Of man's closed hand, grows dark and dense,
And weighted with a leaden sense
Of wrong endured through silent years—
The force of disregarded tears.

With what slight creatures will you wive
In coming days, O men of pride,
When those of us who greatly strive
Are driven homeless from your side?
You do not well to make the gate
Of entrance to your halls so strait,
That access to the heaven within
The highest hearts no more may win;
You are not wise to rest your hope
On natures of a narrower scope,
And leave the souls which like your own
Aspire, to find their way alone,
And go down childless to their graves,
The while you get your sons of slaves.