Greenwich Branch member Ida Angland has created this original poem and musical composition, titled “Daunting is the Woman,” to honor the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment and the unveiling of the first statue of real women in Central Park by the group Monumental Women today, August 26.
Originally invited to perform the piece at the unveiling of the monument, due to COVID-19, Angland will now present it virtually by Gateway Classical Music Society. A Zoom sing-along will be offered to the Greenwich Pen Women as well.
Inspired by a lecture given to the Greenwich Pen Women in December 2019 by Coline Jenkins — the great-great-granddaughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a Greenwich resident, and Monumental Women vice president — Angland was deeply moved by the “absurd reality” that there were no monuments to real women in Central Park, only fictional ones like Mother Goose. “Women’s Rights Pioneers,” by sculptor Meredith Bergmann, features Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Sojourner Truth.
Angland wrote, “I thought about the powerful feelings that reality stirred in me, and I decided to use the poem’s message as the lyrics to a marching hymn, which I have dedicated to the movement.”
Daunting is the Woman
By Ida Angland
Greenwich Branch
Daunting is the woman
Whose statue stands divine
A monument to eternity
Her bearing proud sublime
Standing tall and beautiful
Belies her suff’ring and tears
For living seen tho invisible
In time to marching years
Truth revealed her compromised
Dismissed, forgotten and small
But now the trends are turning
As gallant she stands tall
A change is now approaching
Remembered times unfold
In monuments to woman
Preserve her story told
Rising far revealing
So high above the stone
Her light forever glist’ning
Immortal strides are sewnPo
Daunting is the woman
Her worth at last be known
Her light forever glist’ning
So high above the stone
YOU’RE A VERY TALENTED WOMAN.
LOVE THE POEM & MUSICAL PIECE.
THANK YOU FOR SHARING IT ALL.