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Shall we who are about to live, / Cry like a clarion on the battle-field? / Or weep before 't is fought, the fight to yield? / Thou that hast been and yet that art to be / Named by our name, that art the First and Last! / Womanhood of the future and the past! / Thee we salute, below the breath. Oh, give / To us the courage of our mystery. / . Pealing, the clock of Time / Has struck the Woman's Hour. / We hear it on our knees. For ah, no power / Is ours to trip too lightly to the rhyme / Of idle words that fan the summer air, / Of bounding words that leap the years to come. / Ideal of ourselves! We dream and dare. / Victurae salutamus! _Thou_ art dumb.
[1] Written for the first commencement at Smith College.