dedicated and sequestered beauty, their child-loving breasts, and
consecrated chambers.




TWO BURDENS


One is on the breast and clings there with arms, and one on the back and
clings with thongs. The burden of the back bows the body, turns the face
from the sky, narrows the lungs and flattens the foot; takes away the
flight and the dance from the gait of man, and ties him towards the
earth--not only in the way of nature, by means of his arched feet, but by
a heavy lien upon his shoulders and his brows. It is the fardel that
makes this vital figure to be subject visibly, and at several points, to
that law of gravitation which, in a state of liberty, it uses to
withstand, to countervail, to leap from, to walk with, making the
universal tether elastic. Bend in two this supple spine that can lift
itself, like a snake erect, with something better than mere balance--with
life and the active will; bend the back, and at once gravitation takes
hold of the loins and grasps the knees, and pulls upon the shoulders, and
the neck feels the weight of an abject head.

Wherever women are told off to hard open-air labour, we shall find among
them a lower class of their own kind--poorer where all are poor, and
straining at their task where all are labouring--who walk the dust with
burdens on their backs. Loads of field-labour are these, or of the
labour in a fishing-port, and large in proportion to their weight; too
large to be bound close and carried on the head, too wide to be borne on