20. 
’The wild-eyed women throng around her path:  1585
From their luxurious dungeons, from the dust
Of meaner thralls, from the oppressor’s wrath,
Or the caresses of his sated lust
They congregate:—­in her they put their trust;
The tyrants send their armed slaves to quell 1590
Her power;—­they, even like a thunder-gust
Caught by some forest, bend beneath the spell
Of that young maiden’s speech, and to their chiefs rebel.

21. 
’Thus she doth equal laws and justice teach
To woman, outraged and polluted long; 1595
Gathering the sweetest fruit in human reach
For those fair hands now free, while armed wrong
Trembles before her look, though it be strong;
Thousands thus dwell beside her, virgins bright,
And matrons with their babes, a stately throng! 1600
Lovers renew the vows which they did plight
In early faith, and hearts long parted now unite,

22. 
’And homeless orphans find a home near her,
And those poor victims of the proud, no less,
Fair wrecks, on whom the smiling world with stir, 1605
Thrusts the redemption of its wickedness:—­
In squalid huts, and in its palaces
Sits Lust alone, while o’er the land is borne
Her voice, whose awful sweetness doth repress
All evil, and her foes relenting turn, 1610
And cast the vote of love in hope’s abandoned urn.

23. 
’So in the populous City, a young maiden
Has baffled Havoc of the prey which he
Marks as his own, whene’er with chains o’erladen
Men make them arms to hurl down tyranny,—­ 1615
False arbiter between the bound and free;
And o’er the land, in hamlets and in towns
The multitudes collect tumultuously,
And throng in arms; but tyranny disowns
Their claim, and gathers strength around its trembling thrones. 1620

24. 
’Blood soon, although unwillingly, to shed
The free cannot forbear—­the Queen of Slaves,
The hoodwinked Angel of the blind and dead,
Custom, with iron mace points to the graves
Where her own standard desolately waves 1625
Over the dust of Prophets and of Kings. 
Many yet stand in her array—­“she paves
Her path with human hearts,” and o’er it flings
The wildering gloom of her immeasurable wings.

25. 
’There is a plain beneath the City’s wall, 1630
Bounded by misty mountains, wide and vast,
Millions there lift at Freedom’s thrilling call
Ten thousand standards wide, they load the blast
Which bears one sound of many voices past,
And startles on his throne their sceptred foe:  1635
He sits amid his idle pomp aghast,
And that his power hath passed away, doth know—­
Why pause the victor swords to seal his overthrow?