Yet indeed.
To see a wrong or suffering moves us all
To undo it, though we should undo ourselves;
Ay, all the more, that we undo ourselves;
That’s womanly, past doubt, and not ill-moved.
A natural movement, therefore, on my part,
To fill the chair up of my cousin’s wife,
And save him from a devil’s company!
We’re all so,—made so—’tis our woman’s trade
To suffer torment for another’s ease.
The world’s male chivalry has perished out,
But women are knights-errant to the last;
And, if Cervantes had been greater still,
He had made his Don a Donna.
So it clears,
And so we rain our skies blue.
Put away
This weakness. If, as I have just now said,
A man’s within me—let him act himself,
Ignoring the poor conscious trouble of blood
That’s called the woman merely. I will write
Plain words to England,—if too late, too late,—
If ill-accounted, then accounted ill;
We’ll trust the heavens with something.
‘Dear Lord Howe,
You’ll find a story on another leaf
That’s Marian Erle’s,—what noble friend of yours
She trusted once, through what flagitious means
To what disastrous ends;—the story’s true.
I found her wandering on the Paris quays,
