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[Illustration: A DREAM OF UNFAIRLY-TREATED WOMEN.

(_A Long Way After the Laureate._)]

I read, before my eyelids dropt their shade,
A leader on weak women and their woe,
In toil and industry, in art and trade,
In this hard world below.

And for awhile the thought of the sad part
Played by them and of Fate's ill-balanced scales,
Moistened mine eyelids, and made ache mine heart,
Remembering these strange tales

Of woman's miseries in every land,
I saw wherever poverty draws breath
Woman and anguish walking hand in hand,
The dreary road to death.

Those pallid sempstresses of HOOD'S great song
Peopled the hollow dark, not now alone,
And I heard sounds of insult, shame, and wrong,
And grief's sad monotone,

From hearts, like flints, beaten by tyrant hoofs;
And I saw crowds in sombre sweating-dens,
With reeking walls and dank and dripping roofs--
Fit scarce for styes or pens.