Who art alone first cause, Of all that Nature works through changeless laws, Maker and author of whate’er we see That lives Thy life amid eternity.
Victoria C. Woodhull
The Public Record
Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin, was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement who ran for president of the United States in the 1872 election. While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for the presidency, some disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because according to the Constitution she would have been too young to be president if elected.
gutenberg.org
Look back ere time was, and the face of earth, Lifeless and still, was solitude and dearth; No lovely valleys and no hills sublime; No rocks or waters marked the hours of time.
Yet look again; behold the grass-clad hills, Dew-spangled, multitudinous with rills, Yet lifeless still: no reason and no sight, That in these many glories know delight.
Yet look again; field-beasts and birds of sky Range woods and glades mere hunger to supply; And time rolls onward, rocks grow old and gray, And Nature’s face is wrinkled with decay.
Man comes at last; Man, who to man is what God is to earth; God’s image in the soul; in form her birth.
Yet look again; Man reaches to his prime, Like God, creating through fixed laws and time, Must he not, too, through each gradation go, Reaching to higher passes from the low?
Is not our life breathed forth from God’s own breath?
Once having lived, can we in truth know death?
Then, wherefore, with loud prayer and unctuous face, To brother say: “Ye run a foolish race To the abyss.” For how shall any know Whither God’s ministry shall make us go?
Doubt ye the power that governs everything That lovely earth from chaos forth did bring?
Canst mark the line where ceases God’s command From work that’s done by man’s own shaping hand?
Charity, with its long cloak of justice escaped, has long enough covered a multitude of sins.