Poem of Remembrances for A Girl or A Boy of These States

REMEMBER the organic compact of These

      States!

Remember the pledge of the Old Thirteen thence-forwardthenceforward to the rights, life, liberty, equality, of man!

Remember what was promulged by the founders,

      ratified by The States, signed in black and

      white by the Commissioners, read by Wash-ingtonWashington at the head of the army!

Remember the purposes of the founders!—Re-memberRemember Washington!

Remember the copious humanity streaming from

      every direction toward America!

Remember the hospitality that belongs to nations and men!—(Cursed be nation, woman, man, without hospitality!)

Remember, government is to subserve individuals!

Not any, not the President, is to have one jot more than you or me,

Not any habitan of America is to have one jot less than you or me.

Anticipate when the thirty or fifty millions are to become the hundred, or two hundred, or five hundred millions, of equal freemen and free-womenfreewomen, amicably joined.

Recall ages—One age is but a part—ages are

      but a part,

Recall the angers, bickerings, delusions, supersti-tionssuperstitions of the idea of caste,

Recall the bloody cruelties and crimes.

Anticipate the best women!

I say an unnumbered new race of hardy and well-definedwell-defined women are to spread through all

      These States,

I say a girl fit for These States must be free, capable, dauntless, just the same as a boy.

Anticipate your own life—retract with merciless power,

Shirk nothing—retract in time—Do you see those errors, diseases, weaknesses, lies, thefts?

Do you see that lost character?—Do you see

      decay, consumption, rum-drinking, dropsy,

      fever, mortal cancer or inflammation?

Do you see death, and the approach of death?

Think of the soul!

I swear to you that body of yours gives proportions to your soul somehow to live in other spheres,

I do not know how, but I know it is so.

Think of loving and being loved!

I swear to you, whoever you are, you can interfuse yourself with such things that everybody that sees you shall look longingly upon you!

Think of the past!

I warn you that in a little while others will find their past in you and your times.

The race is never separated—nor man nor woman

      escapes,

All is inextricable—things, spirits, nature, nations, you too—from precedents you come.

Recall the ever-welcome defiers! (The mothers

      precede them;)

Recall the sages, poets, saviours, inventors, law-giverslawgivers, of the earth,

Recall Christ, brother of rejected persons —

      brother of slaves, felons, idiots, and of insane and diseased persons.

Think of the time when you was not yet born!

Think of times you stood at the side of the dying!

Think of the time when your own body will be

      dying!

Think of spiritual results!

Sure as the earth swims through the heavens,

      does every one of its objects pass into

      spiritual results!

Think of manhood, and you to be a man!

Do you count manhood, and the sweet of manhood, nothing?

Think of womanhood, and you to be a woman!

The creation is womanhood,

Have I not said that womanhood involves all?

Have I not told how the universe has nothing

      better than the best womanhood?