The Star in the West

THE VIRGIN 91 it is cheaper to keep a cow , and once and for all have done with it, than to be constantly running round the corner for a penny - worth of milk ; and the lower stratum - the blesséd poor - spend most of their lives in the act of engendering the elite of heaven and the scum of this earth , “ mere shells , husks of the golden wheat that might grow even here ,”' if it were not for our prudery , our religion , and our laws . Percy -- the Percy of “ The Poem ,” and not of “ Why Jesus Wept ,” is optimistic enough concerning that vast army of unsexed women who are degraded by want of food and surfeit of marriage ; for it is to these two that their existence as such is chiefly due . If wives were a success , man would not want to go neighing after other women ; if food were not so ex pensive , women would not sell their bodies for offal . Vaughan says to him , pointing to a prostitute , “ Do you find beauty in her ? ” to which Percy answers : “ No , but I see in her history a poem , to which I trust that God will write an end !” And so the God , who is eternal Love , at present does — in the Lock Hospital or over Waterloo Bridge . Nevertheless there is a great truth hidden in this line . The truth that love shall triumph over mind , or rather that both shall agree . If the carnal act is foul , it is then as foul in the palace as in the brothel : mere prostitution of the body need not necessarily mean a similar prostitution of the mind , as we saw in the “ Tale of Archais .' Every woman's body is as free a possession of her own as that of every man is of his own , and what is disgraceful to woman is equally disgraceful to man , and vice versa . Law to be true must be just , and as " 2 1 The Poem , vol . i, p . 57 . 2 Ibid . vol . i, p . 58 .