Page:Carroll - Phantasmagoria and other poems (1869).djvu/174

Hemmed in by social forms she pines in vain:
Man has his work, but what can woman do?"
And answer came there from the creeping gloom,
The creeping gloom that settled into night:
"Peace, for thy lot is other than a man's;
His is a path of thorns; he beats them down—
He faces death—he wrestles with despair:
Thine is of roses; to adorn and cheer
His barren lot, and hide the thorns in flowers."
She spake again, in bitter tone she spake;
"Aye, as a toy, the puppet of an hour;
Or a fair posy, newly plucked at morn,
But flung aside and withered ere the night."
And answer came there from the creeping gloom,
The creeping gloom that blackened into night:
"So shalt thou be the lamp to light his path,
What time the shades of sorrow close around."
And, so it seemed to her, an awful light
Pierced slowly through the darkness, orbed, and grew,