With added ages passed in slight and scorn,
Maintained the chains of primal womanhood,
And clogged in turn man’s power of greater good;
Egypt or Greece in vain sought heavenly light
While woman’s soul was held from equal flight,—
Her path confined by man to sordid end,
As subjugated wife, or hireling transient friend.
XI.
Marriage—which might have been a mateship sweet,
Where equal souls in hallowed converse meet,