43. 
’Can man be free if woman be a slave? 1045
Chain one who lives, and breathes this boundless air,
To the corruption of a closed grave! 
Can they whose mates are beasts, condemned to bear
Scorn, heavier far than toil or anguish, dare
To trample their oppressors? in their home 1050
Among their babes, thou knowest a curse would wear
The shape of woman—­hoary Crime would come
Behind, and Fraud rebuild religion’s tottering dome.

44. 
’I am a child:—­I would not yet depart. 
When I go forth alone, bearing the lamp 1055
Aloft which thou hast kindled in my heart,
Millions of slaves from many a dungeon damp
Shall leap in joy, as the benumbing cramp
Of ages leaves their limbs—­no ill may harm
Thy Cythna ever—­truth its radiant stamp 1060
Has fixed, as an invulnerable charm,
Upon her children’s brow, dark Falsehood to disarm.

45. 
’Wait yet awhile for the appointed day—­
Thou wilt depart, and I with tears shall stand
Watching thy dim sail skirt the ocean gray; 1065
Amid the dwellers of this lonely land
I shall remain alone—­and thy command
Shall then dissolve the world’s unquiet trance,
And, multitudinous as the desert sand
Borne on the storm, its millions shall advance, 1070
Thronging round thee, the light of their deliverance.

46. 
’Then, like the forests of some pathless mountain,
Which from remotest glens two warring winds
Involve in fire which not the loosened fountain
Of broadest floods might quench, shall all the kinds 1075
Of evil, catch from our uniting minds
The spark which must consume them;—­Cythna then
Will have cast off the impotence that binds
Her childhood now, and through the paths of men
Will pass, as the charmed bird that haunts the serpent’s den. 1080

47. 
’We part!—­O Laon, I must dare nor tremble,
To meet those looks no more!—­Oh, heavy stroke! 
Sweet brother of my soul! can I dissemble
The agony of this thought?’—­As thus she spoke
The gathered sobs her quivering accents broke, 1085
And in my arms she hid her beating breast. 
I remained still for tears—­sudden she woke
As one awakes from sleep, and wildly pressed
My bosom, her whole frame impetuously possessed.

48. 
’We part to meet again—­but yon blue waste, 1090
Yon desert wide and deep, holds no recess,
Within whose happy silence, thus embraced
We might survive all ills in one caress: 
Nor doth the grave—­I fear ’tis passionless—­
Nor yon cold vacant Heaven:—­we meet again 1095
Within the minds of men, whose lips shall bless
Our memory, and whose hopes its light retain
When these dissevered bones are trodden in the plain.’