Somewhere,--somewhere,--love
is in store for them,--the universe must not be allowed to fool
them so cruelly. What infinite pathos in the small, half-
unconscious artifices by which unattractive young persons seek to
recommend themselves to the favor of those towards whom our dear
sisters, the unloved, like the rest, are impelled by their God-
given instincts!
Read what the singing-women--one to ten thousand of the suffering
women--tell us, and think of the griefs that die unspoken! Nature
is in earnest when she makes a woman; and there are women enough
lying in the next churchyard with very commonplace blue slate-
stones at their head and feet, for whom it was just as true that
"all sounds of life assumed one tone of love," as for Letitia
Landon, of whom Elizabeth Browning said it; but she could give
words to her grief, and they could not.--Will you hear a few
stanzas of mine?
THE VOICELESS.
We count the broken lyres that rest
Where the sweet wailing singers slumber, -
But o'er their silent sister's breast
The wild flowers who will stoop to number?
A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them; -
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!
Nay, grieve not for the dead alone
Whose song has told their hearts' sad story, -
Weep for the voiceless, who have known
The cross without the crown of glory!
Not where Leucadian breezes sweep
O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow,
But where the glistening night-dews weep
On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow.
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