Classic Poem

There is room for ladies in a world that holds soft rain,
For delicate, undefended beauty
And gentleness.
There is room for slender young things, virgin-wistful,
With minds like bridal veils;
There is room for brittle old-lady minds
That function like the tinkling of tea-cups.
We have been too long blurry with rain,
They say,
And they are doubtless right:
It is the hour for biting wind and stabbing sunshine.
But I have walked in the soft rain today;
I have seen the mist
Sifting through the black mantilla of the bare elm;
There was in it eternal beauty —
It wrapped my heart in peace.
And it was shown unto me
That there will always be room for ladies — a little room —
In a world that wearies, sometimes,
Of its hausfrau harvest-zeal for corn and squashes,
Of the feminist fury of its Wind-Valkyries;
That lapses, even,
From its male salt and sleet and thunder
Into moods of rain,
Soft rain,