Woman in the Nineteenth Century Part 37

Ca.s.sandra answers, with a careless disdain,

"This is a busy slave."

With all the lofty decorum of manners among the ancients, how free was their intercourse, man to man, how full the mutual understanding between prince and "busy slave!" Not here in adversity only, but in the pomp of power it was so. Kings were approached with ceremonious obeisance, but not hedged round with etiquette; they could see and know their fellows.

The Andromache here is just as lovely as that of the Iliad.

To her child whom they are about to murder, the same that was frightened at the "glittering plume," she says,

"Dost thou weep, My son? Hast thou a sense of thy ill fate?

Why dost thou clasp me with thy hands, why hold My robes, and shelter thee beneath my wings, Like a young bird? No more my Hector comes, Returning from the tomb; he grasps no more His glittering spear, bringing protection to thee."

* * "O, soft embrace, And to thy mother dear. O, fragrant breath!

In vain I swathed thy infant limbs, in vain I gave thee nurture at this breast, and tolled, Wasted with care. _If ever_, now embrace, Now clasp thy mother; throw thine arms around My neck, and join thy cheek, thy lips to mine."

As I look up, I meet the eyes of Beatrice Cenci, Beautiful one! these woes, even, were less than thine, yet thou seemest to understand them all. Thy clear, melancholy gaze says, they, at least, had known moments of bliss, and the tender relations of nature had not been broken and polluted from the very first. Yes! the gradations of woe are all but infinite: only good can be infinite.

Certainly the Greeks knew more of real home intercourse and more of Woman than the Americans. It is in vain to tell me of outward observances. The poets, the sculptors, always tell the truth. In proportion as a nation is refined, women _must_ have an ascendency.

It is the law of nature.

Beatrice! thou wert not "fond of life," either, more than those princesses. Thou wert able to cut it down in the full flower of beauty, as an offering to _the best_ known to thee. Thou wert not so happy as to die for thy country or thy brethren, but thou wert worthy of such an occasion.

In the days of chivalry, Woman was habitually viewed more as an ideal; but I do not know that she inspired a deeper and more home-felt reverence than Iphigenia in the breast of Achilles, or Macarla in that of her old guardian, Iolaus.

We may, with satisfaction, add to these notes the words to which Haydn has adapted his magnificent music in "The Creation."

"In native worth and honor clad, with beauty, courage, strength adorned, erect to heaven, and tall, he stands, a Man!--the lord and king of all! The large and arched front sublime of wisdom deep declares the seat, and in his eyes with brightness s.h.i.+nes the soul, the breath and image of his G.o.d. With fondness leans upon his breast the partner for him formed,--a woman fair, and graceful spouse. Her softly smiling virgin looks, of flowery spring the mirror, bespeak him love, and joy and bliss."

Whoever has heard this music must have a mental standard as to what Man and Woman should be. Such was marriage in Eden when "erect to heaven _he_ stood;" but since, like other inst.i.tutions, this must be not only reformed, but revived, the following lines may be offered as a picture of something intermediate,--the seed of the future growth:--

H.

THE SACRED MARRIAGE.

And has another's life as large a scope?

It may give due fulfilment to thy hope, And every portal to the unknown may ope.

If, near this other life, thy inmost feeling Trembles with fateful prescience of revealing The future Deity, time is still concealing;

If thou feel thy whole force drawn more and more To launch that other bark on seas without a sh.o.r.e; And no still secret must be kept in store;

If meannesses that dim each temporal deed, The dull decay that mars the fleshly weed, And flower of love that seems to fall and leave no seed--

Hide never the full presence from thy sight Of mutual aims and tasks, ideals bright, Which feed their roots to-day on all this seeming blight.

Twin stars that mutual circle in the heaven, Two parts for spiritual concord given, Twin Sabbaths that inlock the Sacred Seven;

Still looking to the centre for the cause, Mutual light giving to draw out the powers, And learning all the other groups by cognizance of one another's laws.

The parent love the wedded love includes; The one permits the two their mutual moods; The two each other know, 'mid myriad mult.i.tudes;

With child-like intellect discerning love, And mutual action energising love, In myriad forms affiliating love.

A world whose seasons bloom from pole to pole, A force which knows both starting-point and goal, A Home in Heaven,--the Union in the Soul.