"O brother, you have known the pangs we felt, What heats of indignation when we heard Of those that iron-cramp'd their women's feet; Of lands in which at the altar the poor bride Gives her harsh groom for bridal-gift a scourge; Of living hearts that crack within the fire Where smoulder their dead despots; and of those-- Mothers--that, all prophetic pity, fling Their pretty maids in the running flood, and swoops The vulture, beak and talon, at the heart Made for all noble motion; and I saw That equal baseness lived in sleeker times With smoother men: the old leaven leaven'd all: Millions of throats would bawl for civil rights, No woman named: therefore I set my face Against all men, and lived but for mine own. Far from all men I built a fold for them." So speaks the princess of the story; profusely, if with great dignity; bitterly, but argumentatively: it is a heightened, an exalted prose style; but it has not taken that leap into infinity which is the mark of the poetic grand manner. For a contrast, consider this; the work of another Victorian bard; one not greater than Tennyson, but here with his poet's blue mantle upon him, robed with the infinite. He, too, is smitten with compassion for certain women; and the flame leaps up from the blow in this wise: Here, down between the dusty trees, At this lank edge of haggard wood, Women with labour-loosened knees, With gaunt backs bowed by servitude, Stop, shift their loads, and pray, and fare Forth with souls easier for the prayer. * * * * * God of this grievous people, wrought After the likeness of their race, By faces like thine own besought, Thine own blind helpless eyeless face, I too, that have nor tongue nor knee For prayer, I have a word to thee. It was for this then, that thy speech Was blown about the world in flame, And men's souls shot up out of reach Of fear or lust or thwarting shame-- That thy faith over souls should pass As sea-winds burning the young grass? It was for this, that prayers like these Should spend themselves about thy feet. And with hard overlaboured knees Kneeling, these slaves of men should beat Bosoms too lean to suckle sons, And fruitless as their orisons?