"Yet seem ye not as those Within whose bosoms memories vigils keep: Beneath your drooping lids no passions sleep; And your pale brows Bear not the tracery of emotion deep-- Ye seem too cold and passionless to weep!" A "Shaker Girl," in one of the Kentucky societies, published soon afterward the following "Answer to Charlotte Cushman," which is certainly not without spirit: "We are, indeed, the things we seem to be, Of earth, and from its iron influence free: For we are they, or halt, or lame, or dumb, 'On whom the ends of this vain world are come.' "We have outlived those day-dreams of the mind-- Those flattering phantoms which so many bind; All man-made creeds (your 'faith's sustaining lever') We have forsaken, and have left forever! "To plainly tell the truth, we do not rue The sober, godly course that we pursue; But 'tis not we who live the dronish lives, But those who have their husbands or their wives! But if by drones you mean they're lazy men, Then, Charlotte Cushman, take it back again; For one, with half an eye, or half a mind, Can there see industry and wealth combined. "If camps and councils--soldiers' 'fields of fame'-- Or yet a people's praise or people's blame, Is all that gives the sage or bard his name, We can 'forego the strife, nor own our shame' What great temptations you hold up to view For men of sense or reason to pursue! The praise of mortals!--what can it avail, When all their boasted language has to fail? And 'sorrow hath not scored with demon hand,' Nor 'o'er our hopes pass'd treachery's burning brand;' But where the sorrows and the treachery are, I think may easily be made appear. In 'bridal scenes,' in 'banquets and in bowers!' 'Mid revelry and variegated flowers, Is where your mother Eve first felt their powers. The 'bridal scenes,' you say, 'we'd grace right well!' 'Lang syne' there our first parents blindly fell!-- The bridal scene! Is this your end and aim? And can you this pursue, 'nor own your shame?' If so--weak, pithy, superficial thing-- Drink, silent drink the sick hymeneal spring. 'The bridal scene! the banquet or the bowers, Or woman's [bed of thorns, or] path of flowers,' Can't all persuade our souls to turn aside To live in filthy lust or cruel pride. Alas! your path of flowers will disappear; E'en now a thousand thorns are pointed near; Ah! here you find 'base treachery's burning brand,' And sorrows score the heart, nor spare the hand; But here 'Beauty's sovereign'--so say you-- A thing that in one hour may lose its hue-- It lies upon the surface of the skin-- Aye, Beauty's self was never worth a pin; But still it suits the superficial mind-- The slight observer of the human kind; The airy, fleety, vain, and hollow thing, That only feeds on wily flattering. 'Man owns its powers?' And what will not man own To gain his end--to captivate--dethrone?