Nor blankly epicene, as scoffers say, The necessary sequence of that day; For not by vapid imitation low, Or aping falser sex shall truer grow; Nor modish mind may fathom Nature’s range, Or fix the fleeting scope of human change; Can singer blind the rainbow’s tints compare?— The brain enslaved from birth the freeman’s powers declare? XLVIII. Work we in faith, secure that precious seed Shall bear due fruit for man’s extremest need; Not greatly timorous, as those fruits we see, What changed existence from such food may be; For well we wot shall come forth worthy soul, Or male or female, with impartial dole Of all that life can grant of good or great,— Happy what each may bring to help the common fate. XLIX. By mutual aid perfecting complex man, Their twofold vision human life may scan From differing standpoints, grasping from the two A clearer concept and a bolder view; And thus diverse humanity shall learn A wisdom which not single sex might earn; Each on the problem casting needful light, Not fully known of one without the other’s sight. L. How should he write what she alone may tell?— The movements of her psychic ebb and swell; The latent springs of life that in her gush, When motherhood’s first throb awakes her flush, And swift the signal flashes to her soul, Of future being claiming her control; Seeking from her its mind and body’s food; Drawing, to make its own, her evil and her good. LI. Within herself the drama’s scene is laid, The Birth and Growth of Soul the mystery played; She, in her part, is but an agent mute, Her brain untutored, nor her tact acute, Her nerve-strung body slow as senseless soil To watch the working of the seedling’s toil; In vain before her inmost vision spread The hidden streams from whence the vital founts are fed. LII. The mother’s blindness was blind man’s decree, And to himself reverts the misery; Through hapless years his ordinance has run, And harsh reward of ignorance has won; His pride of maledom, dull to recognise The deeper depth accessive to her eyes, Forbade to teach her brain to understand The facts that, deftly sought, lay ready to her hand. LIII. Less wisely he, his curious search to serve, In helpless creature teased the quivering nerve, And strove to probe the covert ways of life By living butchery with learned knife, And cruel anodyne that chained the will, Yet left the shuddering victim conscious still: But Nature shrinks from foul and fierce attack, Nor yields her holiest truths on such a murderer’s rack. LIV.