Who believed that a poetess could ever be more than an Annot
Lyle of the harp, to soothe with sweet melodies the leisure of her lord,
until in Elizabeth Barrett's hands the thing became a trumpet? Where
are gone the sneers with which army surgeons and parliamentary orators
opposed Mr. Sidney Herbert's first proposition to send Florence
Nightingale to the Crimea? In how many towns has the current of popular
prejuduce against female orators been reversed by one winning speech
from Lucy Stone! Where no logic can prevail, success silences. First
give woman, if you dare, the alphabet, then summon her to her career;
and though men, ignorant and prejudiced, may oppose its beginnings,
there is no danger but they will at last fling around her conquering
footsteps more lavish praises than ever greeted the opera's idol,--more
perfumed flowers than ever wooed, with intoxicating fragrance, the
fairest butterfly of the ball-room.
THE MORNING STREET.
I walk alone the Morning Street,
Filled with the silence strange and sweet:
All seems as lone, as still, as dead,
As if unnumbered years had fled,
Letting the noisy Babel be
Without a breath, a memory.
The light wind walks with me, alone,
Where the hot day like flame was blown;
Where the wheels roared and dust was beat,
The dew is in the Morning Street.
Where are the restless throngs that pour
Along this mighty corridor
While the noon flames? the hurrying crowd
Whose footsteps make the city loud?
The myriad faces? hearts that beat
No more in the deserted street?--
Those footsteps, in their dream-land maze,
Cross thresholds of forgotten days;
Those faces brighten from the years
In morning suns long set in tears;
Those hearts--far in the Past they beat--
Are singing in _their_ Morning Street.
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