What's she I see in Camden street?
As I ride through the evening shade,
In armor clad from head to feet,
A faded woman, yet a maid?
" Halt! " comes the challenge, deep and low;
" Now, whom be you that glints the dark? "
" Know I am she that, long ago,
You named Joan, the Maid of Arc!

" Here in this Quaker hamlet born,
A Quaker child with rustic sense,
I stand an effigy forlorn
And challenge you who drew me hence!
One day among our Hicksite Friends
I felt the spirit come to preach —
You printed me to the world's ends,
A miracle of face and speech.

" No more I loved what I had been;
I felt a fierce ambition come
And plunged into the world of men
And for their world exchanged a home —
Lectured, harangued the mob at polls,
Unfrocked my limbs to tread the stage,
Played like bright witches with their souls,
Till beauty fled before old age.

" Give back to me my childhood calm!
The wish to wife and mother be,
The fireside kiss, the dew and balm,
And blessings of obscurlty!
" Ah! Maid of Arc, I feel the same:
Home left, the public way to take,
In youth we bore the oriflame,
Last, come the faggots and the stake. "