| |
| BEHIND the veil, where depth is traced | |
| By many a complicated line,— | |
| Behind the lattice closely laced | |
| With filigree of choice design,— | |
| Behind the lofty garden-wall, | 5 |
| Where stranger face can ne’er surprise,— | |
| That inner world her all-in-all, | |
| The Eastern Woman lives and dies. | |
| |
| Husband and children round her draw | |
| The narrow circle where she rests; | 10 |
| His will the single perfect law, | |
| That scarce with choice her mind molests; | |
| Their birth and tutelage the ground | |
| And meaning of her life on earth,— | |
| She knows not elsewhere could be found | 15 |
| The measure of a woman’s worth. | |
| |
| If young and beautiful, she dwells | |
| An Idol in a secret shrine, | |
| Where one high-priest alone dispels | |
| The solitude of charms divine; | 20 |
| And in his happiness she lives, | |
| And in his honor has her own, | |
| And dreams not that the love she gives | |
| Can be too much for him alone. | |
| |
| Within the gay kiosk reclined, | 25 |
| Above the scent of lemon groves, | |
| Where bubbling fountains kiss the wind, | |
| And birds make music to their loves,— | |
| She lives a kind of fairy life, | |
| In sisterhood of fruits and flowers, | 30 |
| Unconscious of the outer strife, | |
| That wears the palpitating hours. | |
| |
| And when maturer duties rise | |
| In pleasure’s and in passion’s place, | |
| Her duteous loyalty supplies | 35 |
| The presence of departed grace: | |
| So hopes she, by untiring truth, | |
| To win the bliss to share with him | |
| Those glories of celestial youth, | |
| That time can never taint or dim. | 40 |
| |
| Thus in the ever-closed Hareem, | |
| As in the open Western home, | |
| Sheds womanhood her starry gleam | |
| Over our being’s busy foam; | |
| Through latitudes of varying faith | 45 |
| Thus trace we still her mission sure, | |
| To lighten life, to sweeten death, | |
| And all for others to endure. | |
| |
| Home of the East! thy threshold’s edge | |
| Checks the wild foot that knows no fear, | 50 |
| Yet shrinks, as if from sacrilege, | |
| When rapine comes thy precincts near: | |
| Existence, whose precarious thread | |
| Hangs on the tyrant’s mood and nod, | |
| Beneath thy roof its anxious head | 55 |
| Rests as within the house of God. | |
| |
| There, though without he feels a slave, | |
| Compelled another’s will to scan, | |
| Another’s favor forced to crave,— | |
| There is the subject still the man: | 60 |
| There is the form that none but he | |
| Can touch,—the face that he alone | |
| Of living men has right to see; | |
| Not he who fills the Prophet’s throne. | |
| |
| Then let the moralist, who best | 65 |
| Honors the female heart, that blends | |
| The deep affections of the West | |
| With thought of life’s sublimest ends, | |
| Ne’er to the Eastern home deny | |
| Its lesser, yet not humble praise, | 70 |
| To guard one pure humanity | |
| Amid the stains of evil days. | |
| |
