Were not a boy? That wakens other thoughts. Thank God for that! To be a man, if aught, is privilege Precious and peerless. While I bide content The modest lot of woman, all my soul Gives truest manhood humblest reverence. It is a great and god-like thing to do! 'Tis a great thing, I think, to be a man. Man fells the forests, plows and tills the fields, And heaps the granaries that feed the world. At his behest swift Commerce spreads her wings, And tires the sinewy sea-birds as she flies, Fanning the solitudes from clime to clime. Smoke-crested cities rise beneath his hand, And roar through ages with the din of trade. Steam is the fleet-winged herald of his will, Joining the angel of the Apocalypse 'Mid sound and smoke and wond'rous circumstance, And with one foot upon the conquered sea And one upon the subject land, proclaims That space shall be no more. The lightnings veil Their fiery forms to wait upon his thought, And give it wing, as unseen spirits pause To bear to God the burden of his prayer. God crowns him with the gift of eloquence, And puts a harp into his tuneful hands, And makes him both his prophet and his priest. 'Twas in his form the great Immanuel Revealed himself; the Apostolic Twelve, Like those who since have ministered the Word, Were men. 'Tis a great thing to be a man. _Grace_. And fortunate to have an advocate Across whose memory convenient clouds Come floating at convenient intervals. The harvest fields that man has honored most Are those where human life is reaped like grain. There never rose a mart, nor shone a sail, Nor sprang a great invention into birth, By other motive than man's love of gold. It is for wrong that he is eloquent; For lust that he indites his sweetest songs. Christ was betrayed by treason of a man, And scourged and hung upon a tree by men; And the sad women who were at his cross, And sought him early at the sepulcher, And since that day, in gentle multitudes Have loved and followed him, have been man's slaves,-- The victims of his power and his desire. _Mary_. And you, a wedded wife-well wedded, too, Can say all this, and say it bitterly! _Grace_. Perhaps because a wife; perhaps because-- _Mary_.