XII. Yet, as hetaira,—comrade, chambermate,— (The ambiguous word bespoke her dubious state), She, craving mental food, might but be guest By paying with her body for the quest; Conceding that, might lead a learned life,— A licence vetoed to the legal wife,— Might win great wealth, or build a lasting fame, Not due to her the guilt that left the tinge of shame. XIII. What guilt was there, apportion it aright To him who fixed the gages of the fight; Blame man, who, reckless of the woman’s fate, In greed for meaner pleasure lost the great; Blame him, the vaunted sage, who knew her mind Peer to his own in skill and wit refined, Yet left the after-ages to bemoan The waste of woman worth that dawned and die unknown. XIV. And deep the shame on man’s insensate heart For later woman doomed to hideous part; Poor lostling, bowed with worse than brutal woes,— To her not even dealt the brute’s repose; Her sweetness sullied, and her frame disgraced, Soul scarce might light her temple fair defaced,— Its chastest sanctities coerced to give For painful bread to eat, for piteous chance to live. XV. While such her fate in lands of cultured creed, Judge woman’s griefs with man of barbarous breed; Slave to his lust, and tiller of his soil, Crippled and crushed by cruelty and toil; Yet still her heart a gentle mien essayed, By deeper passion, holier impulse, swayed; Care for her wretched offspring rarely swerved, And mother-love alone the infant oft preserved. XVI. Thus woman’s life, in low or high estate, Man fettered with a more than natural weight Of sexual function,—disproportioned theme And single basis in his female scheme; He strove to quench her flash of quicker fire, That crossed his lordship or his low desire; Her one permitted end to serve his race, Her individual soul forbidden breathing place. XVII. Scarce other seemed that soul than sentient tomb Of human energy debarred to bloom; Her spirit, pining in its durance drear, Leaves legacy of many a burning tear For aspirations crushed, and aims denied, And instincts thwarted by man’s purblind pride; Her every wish made subject to the nod Of him whose mad conceit proclaimed himself her God. XVIII. So stood at halt, through years of sterile change, His narrowed brain and her restricted range; And man intelligent and woman free, Was union which the world had yet to see; For time to come reserved the golden sight Of glorious harvest from the natural right, To her as amply as to him assigned To compass power unknown in body and in mind.