Woman!
Place the white man on Afric's coast,
Whose swarthy sons in blood delight,
Who of their scorn to Europe boast,
And paint their very demons white:
There, while the sterner sex disdains
To soothe the woes they cannot feel,
Woman will strive to heal his pains,
And weep for those she cannot heal:
Hers is warm pity's sacred glow;
From all her stores she bears a part,
And bids the spring of hope re-flow,
That languish'd in the fainting heart.
'What though so pale his haggard face,
So sunk and sad his looks,'--she cries;
'And far unlike our nobler race,
With crisped locks and rolling eyes;
Yet misery marks him of our kind;
We see him lost, alone, afraid;
And pangs of body, griefs in mind,
Pronounce him man, and ask our aid.
'Perhaps in some far-distant shore
There are who in these forms delight;
Whose milky features please them more,
Than ours of jet thus burnished bright;
Of such may be his weeping wife,
Such children for their sire may call,
And if we spare his ebbing life,
Our kindness may preserve them all.'
Thus her compassion Woman shows:
Beneath the line her acts are these;
Nor the wide waste of Lapland-snows
Can her warm flow of pity freeze: -
'From some sad land the stranger comes,
Where joys like ours are never found;
Let's soothe him in our happy homes,
Where freedom sits, with plenty crown'd.
'Tis good the fainting soul to cheer,
To see the famish'd stranger fed;
To milk for him the mother-deer,
To smooth for him the furry bed.
The powers above our Lapland bless
With good no other people know;
T'enlarge the joys that we possess,
By feeling those that we bestow!'
Thus in extremes of cold and heat,
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poem by George Crabbe
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