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T. L. MITCHELL, Proprietor.
Vol. 2. —No. 3.]
For Woman’s Work.
LIFE’S CONTRASTS.
BY ALICE WILLIAMS BROTHERTON.
No one life to joy is given,
Only, or to sadness:
Fate with careful balanced scale
Weighs out grief and gladness,
If it were not for the thorns
Set among the roses,
Careless hands would nip
the stalk
Ere the bud Uncloses.
If it were not for theclouds
With the asure blended.
We should tire of heat and
glare
Ere the day w’ere ended.
Everything a brighter hue
From the contrast bor
rows ;
We should miss one-half
our joys
If we had no sorrows!
For Woman’s Work,
MEDEA.
iliil.EN C. MOLLOY.
In mythology a heartless
sorceress,’in history a pas
sionate, revengeful woman
—Medea is given as the
einbodimei t of what is
most feared and least con
doned in the sex.
Our artist finely con
ceives’ and portrays the
fierce hatred, the bitter
revenge, the sublime
strength, the magnificent
beauty of this character.
When stirred to her
profoundest depths, woman
is ever grand. Let her
love burn to ashes, and a
loathing hate mount guard
at the shrine where all has
been sacrificed, lest there
should be a resurrection
of what is dead; let all
hope be lost, and a wronged
woman left who did not
lose her strength with her
love and hope—then a
Medea will rise in her
wrath and vengeance.
Emelie Rives has given
us a creature of this type ;
Mariamne—scorned, per
secuted, distrusted—meas
ures her hate in its intensi
ty by the love that lived,
and is dead. Medea-like
she stands in the grandeur
of her physical beauty and
the strength of her wrongs,
and hurls at her king and
husband this bitter invec
tive:—
“May everything that hath
on every world
Since the creation died, be
resurrected
To curse thee with a separate
curse. Oh, demon,
Thou’st found the core of sin
and eaten it.
What! thou wouldst curse
me? am I not accursed
Sufficiently in having been
thy wife?
Be thou accursed, Herod,
accursed
Beyond my utmost knowl
edge of a curse.
Forget that I once loved
thee. Recollect
My hatred only. Thirst;
thou shalt have blood ;
Thou shalt not eat, but be
thyself devoured.
Cry out to heaven, and thy
prayers, rebounding.
Shall hurl thee into hell; while death to thee
Shall be one dream of life most horrid I ”
But in this, the highest type of the pas
sion-queen known to the histrionic art, is
not the conception of the grandest of hu
man possibilities lost?
A character which can be swayed by the
passions of hatred and revenge, as a sturdy
oak of the forest by the mightv wind of
heaven, has only the strength that belongs
to animal life; it may reach the height of
a tragical expression of these passions and
still fallshortoftruegrandeur. Sucbis the
Medea-type— grand, but only humanly so.
When she has reached this point—shaken
to the foundation of her being; rocked by
the surging, tempestuous passions that can
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only find their height and depth in woman
nature; robbed of faith; mace desolate and
desperate by a love that is wronged, a heart
that is trampled upon, a joy that is shatter
ed—if then she can gather a strength that
is almost super human and with a will that
is strong only as her life, put self from her,
sheath the dagger of vengeance when the
power is in her hand to mete out justice,
ADMIRE THE BEAUTIFUL-LOVE THE GOOD.
ATHENS, GEORGIA, FEBRUARY, 1889.
and instead bestow forgiveness— then does
she rise above all that is base; then is she
grand; lhen is she as near God-like as a
human can gr<>w.
A Medea shows the fearful grandeur of
what is human in nature; she who can for
give, exhibits the sublimity of the Divine
in humanity.
A medea degenerates into a base criminal
when she relentlessly plunges the dagger
into the victim brought to her feet. But
if the shadow of contemplated sin be lifted
from her brow ; if the stern lips relax, the
eyes soften in their grim resolve, the clinch
ed fingers loosen from the dagger’s hilt—
letting it fall unheeded —and instead of cold
steel, the warm hand of forgiveness is ex-
'SO Cts. per Year.
tended to the enemy in her power, then is
she exalted from the lowest depths of the
fallen angels to the highest pinnacle of hu
man greatness. Thi» is the grandest char
acter to be conceived—the strength, the
spirit of a Medea; the forgiveness and mer
cy of a Deity.
Revenge leaves her a fallen, sin-stained
creature; forgiveness trans
forms her, as if by purify
ing fires, into something
a-kin to angels.
For Woman’s W’ork.
LAND OF MY
DREAMS.
LILLIE SHELDON.
There’s a land that to me is
fair and bright,
Where my spirit oft’ dwells in
sweet delight;
Where life is love, and love is
truth,
And age is more beautiful far
than youth.
Where the turmoil and strife
of the mad world cease
And are buried deep ’neath
the waves of peace.
There all around me is what it
seems, —
'Tis the ever bright land of my
golden dreams.
There no cloud is so dark but
the sun shines through,
And Hope’s crushed flowers
their bloom renew,
There the heart forgets it can
ache with pain,
And our faith in the world
comes back again.
There shame cannot come
with it’s hideous blight,
But is washed away in the
waves of light’—
The fair light of purity that
ever beams
In the beautiful land of my
cherished dreams.
There are friends that I love
in that far off land,
Whose hearts are brave— whose
lives are grand;
I have crowned them there
with a glory of light,
As princes of honor, as kings
of right.
And my soul by error is there
ne’er stained
But reaches the Heights of the
Unattained;
A d fair as the dew drops in
morning’s first beams
Is my own bitter life in the
land of my dreams.
Our lives are songs. God writes
the words,
Andjwe set them to music at
pleasure;
And the songs grow glad or
sweet or sad
As we chance to fashion the
measure.
We must write the music,
whatever the song,
Whatever the rhyme or
meter;
And if it is sad, we can make
it glad;
Or if sweet, we can make it
sweeter.
The praises of others may be of use in
teaching us not what we are, but what we
ought to be. >
1 . i
Os all lessons, the best is the living les
son.
KATE GARLAND, Editress.