To absorb most listeners, how I listened chief To a voice not hers, nor yet that enemy’s, Nor God’s in wrath, ... but one that mixed with mine Long years ago, among the garden-trees, And said to _me_, to _me_ too, ‘Be my wife, Aurora!’ It is strange, with what a swell Of yearning passion, as snow of ghosts Might beat against the impervious doors of heaven, I thought, ‘Now, if I had been a woman, such As God made women, to save men by love,— By just my love I might have saved this man, And made a nobler poem for the world Than all I have failed in.’ But I failed besides In this; and now he’s lost! through me alone! And, by my only fault, his empty house Sucks in, at this same hour, a wind from hell To keep his hearth cold, make his casements creak For ever to the tune of plague and sin— O Romney, O my Romney, O my friend! My cousin and friend! my helper, when I would, My love, that might be! mine! Why, how one weeps When one’s too weary! Were a witness by, He’d say some folly ... that I loved the man, Who knows?... and make me laugh again for scorn. At strongest, women are as weak in flesh, As men, at weakest, vilest, are in soul: So, hard for women to keep pace with men! As well give up at once, sit down at once, And weep as I do. Tears, tears! _why_, we weep? ’Tis worth enquiry?—That we’ve shamed a life, Or lost a love, or missed a world, perhaps? By no means. Simply, that we’ve walked too far, Or talked too much, or felt the wind i’ the east,— And so we weep, as if both body and soul Broke up in water—this way. Poor mixed rags Forsooth we’re made of, like those other dolls That lean with pretty faces into fairs. It seems as if I had a man in me, Despising such a woman. Yet indeed, To see a wrong or suffering moves us all To undo it, though we should undo ourselves; Ay, all the more, that we undo ourselves; That’s womanly, past doubt, and not ill-moved. A natural movement, therefore, on my part, To fill the chair up of my cousin’s wife, And save him from a devil’s company! We’re all so,—made so—’tis our woman’s trade To suffer torment for another’s ease. The world’s male chivalry has perished out, But women are knights-errant to the last; And, if Cervantes had been greater still, He had made his Don a Donna. So it clears, And so we rain our skies blue. Put away This weakness. If, as I have just now said, A man’s within me,—let him act himself, Ignoring the poor conscious trouble of blood That’s called the woman merely. I will write Plain words to England,—if too late, too late,— If ill-accounted, then accounted ill;