Her body, saved from enervating drain, Shall lend a newer vigour to the brain; Wide shall she roam in realms of untold thought, Which ages since her shackled instinct sought; For oft her prison had the yearnings heard, In murmurings scarce rendered into word;— Promptings which man suspicious strove to choke, Lest that her soul should rise and break his timeworn yoke. XXXIV. For autocrats of old, with treacherous guile, Had bribed the villain’s soul by sensual wile; To meanest man a lower drudge assigned,— With gift of female thrall cajoled the hind; The stolid churl his servitude forgave Whilst he in turn was master to a slave; Through every rank the sexual serfdom ran, And woman’s life was bound in vassalage to man. XXXV. Then, fearing that the slave herself might guess The knavery of her forced enchainedness, A subtle fiction mannish brain designed To dominate her conscience and her mind,— Inhuman dogmas did his genius frame, Investing them with sanctimonious name Of “woman’s duty”; and the fetish base E’en to this reasoned day uplifts its impious face. XXXVI. By cant condoned, man fashioned woman’s “sphere,” And mapped out “natural” bounds to her career; His sapience—should she dare any deed In contravention of his code—decreed On soul or body penalties condign, In part dubbed civil law, and part divine: Misguided man,—confused in self-deceit His unisexual wit and pious pretext meet. XXXVII. Obeisance yet his caste of sex demands;— In legislative script the verbiage stands How lowest boor is lordly “baron” styled, And highest bride as common “feme” reviled; The tardier fear that grants the clown a share In his own governance, denies it her; And British matrons are, by man-made rules, In solemn statute ranked with infants, felons, fools. XXXVIII. The crass injustice early man displayed, His own crude infancy of brain betrayed; His riper judgment scorns the childish use, And cries to all his bygone freaks a truce; Enactments that long blemished legal page Shall fade as figments of a foolish age, Till saner years have every bond erased Which selfish law of man on life of woman placed. XXXIX. Till like with him in human right she stands, Her will an equal power of rule commands; Her voice, in council and in senate heard, To stern debate brings harmonising word; In mutual stress each sex the other cheers, Since one are made their hopes and one their fears; “Self-reverent each, and reverencing each,”— The theme that truer man and freer woman teach. XL.