THE JUDGMENT.
AT last, when all had howled and shrieked their fill—
Her trumpet each had blowed, at freest will—
Had fought and wrangled to her topmost bent—
When wild tempestous fury all was spent,—
When sisters found no other theme to touch
But greatly marvelled they had done so much.
When seed for early sowing was exhausted
And summer crop of thought was brown and frosted—
A solemn hush like terror o’er them fell,
More melancholy far than fun’ral knell.
Just then, when trembling seized the stoutest form
Slow in that lull which heralds coming storm,
The frowsy Blunt arose—a staid old joker
Renowned for nought especial save as smoker.
A genial wight, who, were the truth confessed,
Of good intentions greater store possessed
Than politic discretion, in his breast.
His powder might be somewhat slow exploding,
His musket ne’ertheless was non-corroding.
If one would tempt its fire, I shouldn’t wonder,
Slow match he’d better use, then stand from under.
He, being stirred, displayed unwonted vigor
And showed himself successful humbug-digger.
With fervor boiling, hot with earnest passion
He polished up his theme in foll’wing fashion.
“Go, triumph! ye heralds of heavenly wrath!
Let wild desolation illumine your path!
Spread discord and blighting, unspeakable woe,
Dissension and turmoil wherever you go!
Sow, jealousy, envy, and causeless distrust;
Tread confidence, honor, and manhood in dust;
Aye, bawl yourself hoarser than ear-splitting gongs
To whine of injustice and shriek about wrongs—
Let decency blush at the tatters and rags
Your madness has clothed them in, vilest of hags—
Strut, stagger and bluster across the broad stage
All foaming and frothing in wildest of rage—
Go, blasting sweet maidenhood’s vision of bliss
And pois’ning the lip of affection’s pure kiss.
Go! Blow your tin bugles and rattle your pans,
And dance your vile dances, your shameless can-cans—
Rejoice in your conquests, and dream your weak dreams,
Ye cats paws of shrewder political schemes,
But listen ye shall to the teachings of sense
I offer in kindness and not for offence:
A foretaste of smartings you’ll certainly feel
When squadrons of metal shall rattle their steel,
And, cleaving your armor of dullness in twain
The gospel of soberness burn on your brain
To rankle while being and reason remain.
Your God-given powers are running to waste;
Dry ashes for apples shall pall on your taste;
False logic ye utter, delusion unsound:
Ye’re heaving up boulders that still will rebound;
Now rolleth the wheel still, the waters recede;
Ye are helpless and hopeless at uttermost need;
The weakest of children, ye fondly believe
The rain that is falling ye’ll catch in a sieve;
It may be, since marvels as marvels are o’er,
When water is frozen and water no more.
Yea! silly as daughters ambitious of yore
Like modern reformers, God’s work to review,
Who chopped up their father his youth to renew;
But found only left, when their work was complete,
Bones broken, heaps putrid of gristle and meat.
Your dreams are Utopian, your labors in vain;
The laws of Jehovah are fixed as the main—
Still, calmly to argue this question so wide
If men were consenting and suffrage were tried,
If woman to stations of honor were called,
To govern and legislate duly installed;
And edicts displeasing by her should be made,
Say where is the muscle to make them obeyed?
Ah! spitfires! nurse your wrath but ill concealed!
Ye _may_ despise the rustic blade I wield;
But homely truths, your guilty conscience owns,
Hit hard, and oft, like honest country stones,
Their smitings shatter sinner’s rotten bones.
Ye blind, whose self-conceit, of envy born,
A glorious Holland’s teachings laugh to scorn,
Or hers whose genius bloomed in Afric’s night
And fruited in unequaled Pink and White.
Is it the throne or pow’r the throne behind
That makes the mass obedient and kind?
If leopards cling tenaciously to spots
And Ethiopians, the senseless sots,
At _man’s_ command wont even change their skin
When white is cleaner far, will all within
By woman’s magic finger be remoulded
And mute rebellion sit with arms enfolded?
As well attempt to dip the ocean dry
Or paint away the color of the sky!
Or, (since ye deem all spots a deep disgrace)
A-tip-toe stand, and taking from his place
The sun, wash off the freckles from his face!
Ye say, as oft was said in times gone by
“The water drops wear stones”—I’ll not deny,
But merely hint to all good wives and “kinders”
Each drop that wears the stone is smashed to “flinders.”
“Cui bono,” is a simple short equation
Explained by rule of “cost and compensation,”
Which any one may cypher at his leisure;
Result, of course, according to his pleasure.
Come, tell me now, ye heartless parasites!
Come, say, who of you all have _not_ your rights
Say, is it you, you shiftless gossip spinner,
Who scarcely cook your sweating husband’s dinner,
Who nurse pretended invalidities
And belch in proof your foul acidities;
Who simulate the pain you never bore
In lame excuse to gad the city o’er,
And only darken twice a day your door?
The proof is on your lazy padded bones!
’Tis in your gaddings o’er the paving stones!
Or is it you with sixteen yards of silk
Who never yet repaid your baby-milk,
You strutting figure blocks, who make display
Of fancy shams that honest toil must pay—
Whose father bends with age and waxes pale
To buy the flounces on your sluttish trail?
Or who but thou, with dainty waxen fingers
O’er whom a father’s fond affection lingers,
To soothe your pain and share your childish sorrows,
And pave the way for countless glad to-morrows—
Pays endless bills, expenses of tuition,
And finds his hopes but ashes in fruition,
When you repay his never-failing care
With black ingratitude, and bring despair?
Or you, you shameless wanton, holding high
Your head and leering with salacious eye—
Vampire! whose godless dissipations drain
Your cuckoled husband’s hourly shrinking vein,—
Who coin, in riot waste, his heart and brain
To guilty dollars;—lapping even now
The sweat that oozes from his aching brow
Whose boundless trust and love, by you betrayed,
In wild extravagance and pride, has made
Through silly gallantries,—you know it well—
A forger first, then inmate of a cell?
Relentless fate to thee unkind, O thou
Of rigid oblong face and planished brow,
With bony arms protruding down your side,
In stiff conceit, unbending as your pride,
What darling right hath been to thee denied?
O prim propriety, dost grieve because
Too quick relief from Indiana’s laws
O’ertook your unconsidered application
And left you cheerless on a drear plantation—
A lonely leafless trunk in grim repose
Amid divorce’s chill and loveless snows,
Both vice and virtue flying from your soul
As torrid summers fly the icy pole?
Fastidious pink! whose hypersens’tive notion
No suff’rance bore for animal emotion,
Who pleaded, uncongenial elevation
Had raised you o’er the master of creation—
I’ll risk a random guess, incarnate fair,
You rue the hour that made you as you are.
Perchance ’tis thou, O dusky sprite petite
Of modest air and soulful murmurs sweet,
Whose glad hosannas ring with joy complete
To full admiring houses at your feet?
Or thou, histronic dame, enkindling dreams
Of olive groves, and burning orient beams?
Ah! no, ye lucky ones! ye _have_ the right
To charm a list’ning world with _dear_ delight
And win two hundred dollars in a night.
Ah! ye sly cats, who licks the cream of life
In character of widow, maid, or wife;
Then, purring sweetly rub your silky skins
In sweet cajol’ry on our rugged shins,
’Tis cruel, is it not? bareing to view
Secrets deftly covered up by you?
’Tis cruel, is it not? to lift your paws
And draw the velvet from your pitless claws?
Cruel, to scout your immemorial claim
To innocence, and block the cosy game
You’ve played since Adam, our deluded sire,
Raked chestnuts for _his_ siren from the fire?
What if we let you have your childish way
To bear the heat and burden of a day—
To rear the homes and fortresses and guard
The nation with the nightly watch and ward?
Ye’ll deem the compensation wondrous small
To _make_ the laws ye must enforce for all!
But why on man the awful burden load
Of human miseries decreed of God?
Why charge to him all sorrow since the fall
When well ye know ’tis heritage of all?
Hath woman’s fearful sorrow made you mad
That ye exemption claim you never had?
Such calumny unjust ’tis burning shame
To heap on father’s, brother’s, husband’s name.
Think ye to rear on fancies such as this
The fallen altar of domestic bliss?
Its temple reconstruct with sand and chaff?
You’d better reconstruct yourselves by half!
What need of all this stir, this noisy blow—
This vain parade of wrongs, this empty show?
Go back, ye rebels! seek your native air—
Be happy in the way your mothers were!
Go sit at Jesus’ feet, meek pupils there
And wipe them with your penitential hair!
That woman hath more wrongs, with man they cause,
Than man, from being woman’s partner draws,
Is false as——well, I would not wish to swear,
But truth I’ll tell, for truth is only fair,
And, since ye dare the reading of the roll
Ye can’t complain when I display the scroll.
Go through the town, inquire from street, to street,
And this the truthful record ye shall meet.
A hundred men shall study day and night
How best promote the family’s delight;
And ten are sunk beneath the base control
Of vice, in hopeless servitude of soul.
A hundred men shall gather worldly pelf,
While each shall spend a tithe upon himself;
And ten shall waste in drink and gambling hall
Their children’s patrimony and their all.
A hundred men, with true parental care
Their sons shall guide and guard their daughters fair;
And ten shall school their brood in street and dust
Regardless of their highest holiest trust.
A hundred men shall, in their av’rage rate,
The manly part perform in home and state;
And ten, by selfishness and devilish hate
Humanity shall fairly desecrate.
Aforetime, woman dear, ’twas so with you,
And shall be so again—for God is true,
Nor will forget to gather, as of old,
His wand’ring children in the heav’nly fold.
When clothed upon ye are, in calmer hour,
By soberness, and clad in reason’s pow’r,
Ye’ll marvel at the mad delirium
And weird delusions that with fever come.
Then man shall, softened, bend his lofty pride—
Then both restored shall journey side by side,
And common love shall be the common guide.
It’s not of swillers, sots and blocks, I talk;
I mean good sturdy anglo-saxon stock.
Let these arise, assume their rightful place,
And justly stamp the occidental race—
No more corrupt our honest mother tongue
By mixing alienisms thick among
The euphonies in which a Milton sung;
Nor shapeless Puritanic mongrel breed
By crop with Gallia’s atheistic creed.
Let man be what omniscient God designed,
And woman act the part of womankind.
FINIS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).