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I am of nature weak as others are;
I might have chosen comfortable ways;
Once from these heights I shrank, beheld afar,
In the soft lap of quiet, easy days.
I might--(I will not hide it)--once I might
Have lost, in the warm whirlpools of your voice,
The sense of Evil, the stern cry of Right;
But Truth has steered me free, and I rejoice:
Not with the triumph that looks back to jeer
At the poor herd that call their misery bliss;
But as a mortal speaks when God is near,
I drop you down my answer; it is this:--
I am not yours, because you seek in me
What is the lowest in my own esteem:
Only my flowery levels can you see,
Nor of my heaven-smit summits do you dream.
I am not yours, because you love yourself:
Your heart has scarcely room for me beside.
I could not be shut in with name and pelf;
I spurn the shelter of your narrow pride!
Not yours,--because you are not man enough
To grasp your country's measure of a man!
If such as you, when Freedom's ways are rough,
Cannot walk in them, learn that women can!
Not yours, because, in this the nation's need,
You stoop to bend her losses to your gain,
And do not feel the meanness of your deed:
I touch no palm defiled with such a stain!
Whether man's thought can find too lofty steeps
For woman's scaling, care not I to know;
But when he falters by her side, or creeps,
She must not clog her soul with him to go.
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