B
barbaraa zee
Guest
so I just found a bunch of information about women rights and I wanted to find a poem about it
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P
Patrick Beverley
Guest
Here's a good feminist poem by A. D. Hope:
ADVICE TO YOUNG LADIES
A.U.C. 334: About this date
For a sexual misdemeanor, which she denied,
The vestal virgin Postumia was tried.
Livy records it among affairs of state.
They let her off: it seems she was perfectly pure;
The charge arose because some thought her talk
Too witty for a young girl, her eyes, her walk
Too lively, her clothes too smart to be demure.
The Pontifex Maximus, summing up the case,
Warned her in future to abstain from jokes,
To wear less modish and more pious frocks.
She left the court reprieved, but in disgrace.
What then? With her the annalist is less
Concerned than what the men achieved that year:
Plots, quarrels, crimes, with oratory to spare!
I see Postumia with her dowdy dress,
Stiff mouth and listless step; I see her strive
To give dull answers. She had to knuckle down.
A vestal virgin who scandalized that town
Had fair trial, then they buried her alive.
Alive, bricked up in suffocating dark,
A ration of bread, a pitcher if she was dry,
Preserved the body they did not wish to die
Until her mind was quenched to the last spark.
How many the black maw has swallowed in its time!
Spirited girls who would not know their place;
Talented girls who found that the disgrace
Of being a woman made genius a crime;
How many others, who would not kiss the rod
Domestic bullying broke or public shame?
Pagan or Christian, it was much the same:
Husbands, St. Paul declared, rank next to God.
Livy and Paul, it may be, never knew
That Rome was doomed; each spoke of her with pride.
Tacitus, writing after both had died,
Showed that whole fabric rotten through and through.
Historians spend their lives and lavish ink
Explaining how great commonwealths collapse
From great defects of policy -- perhaps
The cause is sometimes simpler than they think.
It may not seem so grave an act to break
Postumia's spirit as Galileo's, to gag
Hypatia as crush Socrates, or drag
Joan as Giordano Bruno to the stake.
Can we be sure? Have more states perished, then,
For having shackled the inquiring mind,
Than whose who, in their folly not less blind,
Trusted the servile womb to breed free men?
And this is "The March of the Women", the battle hymn of the mighty suffragettes, written by Ethel Smyth:
Shout, shout, up with your song! Cry with the wind for the dawn is breaking;
March, march, swing you along, Wide blows our banner and hope is waking.
Song with its story, dreams with their glory, Lo! they call, and glad is their word!
Loud and louder it swells, Thunder of freedom, the voice of the Lord!
Long, long, we in the past, Cowered in dread from the light of heaven.
Strong, strong, stand we at last, Fearless in faith and with sight new-given.
Strength with its beauty, Life with its duty, (Hear the voice, oh hear and obey!)
These, these, beckon us on. Open your eyes to the blaze of day!
Comrades, ye who have dared, First in the battle to strive and sorrow,
Scorned, spurned, nought have ye cared. Raisng your eyes to a wider morrow.
Ways that are weary, days that are dreary, Toil and pain by faith ye have borne;
Hail, hail, victors ye stand, Wearing the wreath that the brave have worn!
Life, strife, these two are one, Nought can ye win but by faith and daring:
On, on that ye have done, But for the work of today preparing.
Firm in reliance, laugh in defiance! (Laugh in hope, for sure is the end)
March, march, many as one. Shoulder to shoulder and friend to friend.
ADVICE TO YOUNG LADIES
A.U.C. 334: About this date
For a sexual misdemeanor, which she denied,
The vestal virgin Postumia was tried.
Livy records it among affairs of state.
They let her off: it seems she was perfectly pure;
The charge arose because some thought her talk
Too witty for a young girl, her eyes, her walk
Too lively, her clothes too smart to be demure.
The Pontifex Maximus, summing up the case,
Warned her in future to abstain from jokes,
To wear less modish and more pious frocks.
She left the court reprieved, but in disgrace.
What then? With her the annalist is less
Concerned than what the men achieved that year:
Plots, quarrels, crimes, with oratory to spare!
I see Postumia with her dowdy dress,
Stiff mouth and listless step; I see her strive
To give dull answers. She had to knuckle down.
A vestal virgin who scandalized that town
Had fair trial, then they buried her alive.
Alive, bricked up in suffocating dark,
A ration of bread, a pitcher if she was dry,
Preserved the body they did not wish to die
Until her mind was quenched to the last spark.
How many the black maw has swallowed in its time!
Spirited girls who would not know their place;
Talented girls who found that the disgrace
Of being a woman made genius a crime;
How many others, who would not kiss the rod
Domestic bullying broke or public shame?
Pagan or Christian, it was much the same:
Husbands, St. Paul declared, rank next to God.
Livy and Paul, it may be, never knew
That Rome was doomed; each spoke of her with pride.
Tacitus, writing after both had died,
Showed that whole fabric rotten through and through.
Historians spend their lives and lavish ink
Explaining how great commonwealths collapse
From great defects of policy -- perhaps
The cause is sometimes simpler than they think.
It may not seem so grave an act to break
Postumia's spirit as Galileo's, to gag
Hypatia as crush Socrates, or drag
Joan as Giordano Bruno to the stake.
Can we be sure? Have more states perished, then,
For having shackled the inquiring mind,
Than whose who, in their folly not less blind,
Trusted the servile womb to breed free men?
And this is "The March of the Women", the battle hymn of the mighty suffragettes, written by Ethel Smyth:
Shout, shout, up with your song! Cry with the wind for the dawn is breaking;
March, march, swing you along, Wide blows our banner and hope is waking.
Song with its story, dreams with their glory, Lo! they call, and glad is their word!
Loud and louder it swells, Thunder of freedom, the voice of the Lord!
Long, long, we in the past, Cowered in dread from the light of heaven.
Strong, strong, stand we at last, Fearless in faith and with sight new-given.
Strength with its beauty, Life with its duty, (Hear the voice, oh hear and obey!)
These, these, beckon us on. Open your eyes to the blaze of day!
Comrades, ye who have dared, First in the battle to strive and sorrow,
Scorned, spurned, nought have ye cared. Raisng your eyes to a wider morrow.
Ways that are weary, days that are dreary, Toil and pain by faith ye have borne;
Hail, hail, victors ye stand, Wearing the wreath that the brave have worn!
Life, strife, these two are one, Nought can ye win but by faith and daring:
On, on that ye have done, But for the work of today preparing.
Firm in reliance, laugh in defiance! (Laugh in hope, for sure is the end)
March, march, many as one. Shoulder to shoulder and friend to friend.