THE SHIELD AND THE SHADOW.
["Before the 'silent millions' who make up the rank and file of Hindoos discard the cruelties of their marriage system, their opinions, prejudices, and habits of thought must change. Nothing is more certain than that they will change slowly; but we hold to the belief that judicious legislation will hasten the process more powerfully than anything else."—The "Times" on Child-Marriage and Enforced Widowhood in India.]
Yes, compassion is due to thee, India's young daughter;
The sound of thy sorrow, thy plaint of despair
Have reached English ears o'er the wide westward water,
And sympathy stirred, seldom slumbering there.
Child-Wife, or Child-Widow, in agony kneeling
And clasping the skirts of the armed Island Queen,
Her heart is not cold to thine urgent appealing;
Considerate care in her glances is seen.
Not hot as the urgings of zealotry heady
The action of her who's protectrice and guide.
Her stroke must be measured, her sympathy steady,
Whose burden's as great as her power is wide.
She stands, Ægis-armed, looked forth calm, reflective,
Across the wide stretches of old Hindostan.
The plains now subdued to her power protective,
Saw politic AKBAR and sage SHAH JEHAN.
If AKBAR was pitiful, Islam's great sworder,
Shall she of the Ægis be less so than he?
The marriage of widows he sanctioned, his order
Three centuries since laid the ban on Suttee.
And she, his successor, has rescued already
The widow from fire, and the child from the flood;
For mercy's her impulse, her policy steady
Opposes the creed-thralls whose chrism is blood.
And now the appeal of the Child-Widow reaches
The ears ever open to misery's plaint.
She thinks—for the sway of long centuries teaches
That zeal should not hasten, and patience not faint.
The child kneeling there at her skirts is the creature
Of tyrannous ages of creed and of caste;
She bears, helpless prey of the priest, on each feature.
The pitiful brand of a pitiless past.
Long-wrought, closely knit, subtly swaying, deep-rooted,
The system whose shadow is over the child;
By grey superstition debased and imbruted,
By craft's callous cruelty deeply defiled.
But long-swaying custom hath far-reaching issues,
The hand that assails it doth ill to show haste.
The knife that would search poor humanity's tissues,
Hath healing for object, not ravage or waste.
Not coldness, but coolness, sound policy pleads for,
But, subject to that, human sympathies yearn
To aid the child-victim the woman's heart bleeds for,
For whom a man's breast with compassion must burn.
Poor child! The dark shadow that closely pursues her
Means menacing Terror; she sues for a shield,
And how shall the strong Ægis-bearer refuse her?
The bondage of caste to calm justice must yield.
We dare not be deaf to the voice of the pleader
For freedom and purity, nature and right;
Let Wisdom, high-throned as controller and leader,
Meet cruelty's steel with the shield of calm might!