Yes, stone the woman, let the man go free! Draw back your skirts, lest they perchance may touch Her garment as she passes; but to him Put forth a willing hand to clasp with his That led her to destruction and disgrace. Shut up from her the sacred ways of toil, That she no more may win an honest meal; But ope to him all honorable paths Where he may win distinction; give to him Fair, pressed-down measures of life’s sweetest joys. Pass her, O maiden, with a pure, proud face, If she puts out a poor, polluted palm; But lay thy hand in his on bridal day, And swear to cling to him with wifely love And tender reverence. Trust him who led A sister woman to a fearful fate. Yes, stone the woman, let the man go free! Let one soul suffer for the guilt of two— It is the doctrine of a hurried world, Too out of breath for holding balances Where nice distinctions and injustices Are calmly weighed. But ah, how will it be On that strange day of fire and flame, When men shall wither with a mystic fear, And all shall stand before the one true Judge? Shall sex make then a difference in sin? Shall He, the Searcher of the hidden heart, In His eternal and divine decree Condemn the woman and forgive the man?
“Stone the woman, let the man go free”
More from Poet
|
Sweet maiden of Passamaquoddy, Shall we seek for communion of souls Where the deep Mississippi meanders, Or the distant Saskatchewan rolls? Ah no,—for in Maine I will find thee A sweetly sequestrated nook Where the far winding Skoodoowabskooksis Conjoiins with the Skoodoowabskook. There... |
Upon a rock yet uncreate, Amid a chaos inchoate, An uncreated being sate; Beneath him, rock, Above him, cloud. And the cloud was rock, And the rock was cloud. The rock then growing soft and warm, The cloud began to take a form, A form chaotic, vast, and vague, Which issued in the cosmic egg.... |
From Punch Being a Mathematical Madrigal in the Simplest Form CHARMER, on a given straight line, And which we will call B C, Meeting at a common point A, Draw the lines A C, A B. But, my sweetest, so arrange it That they ’re equal, all the three; Then you ’ll find that, in the sequel, All their... |
I Only knew she came and went Lowell. Like troutlets in a pool; Hood. She was a phantom of delight, Wordsworth. And I was like a fool. Eastman. One kiss, dear maid, I said, and sighed, Coleridge. Out of those lips unshorn: Longfellow. She shook her ringlets round her head, Stoddard... |
|
An Austrian army, awfully arrayed, Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade. Cossack commanders cannonading come, Dealing destruction’s devastating doom. Every endeavor engineers essay, For fame, for fortune fighting,—furious fray! Generals ’gainst generals grapple—gracious God! How honors Heaven... |