Stanzas 3-4 Summary

Lines 9-12

Go, gird thyself with grace; collect thy store
Of bright artillery glancing from afar;
Soft melting tones thy thundering cannon's roar,
Blushes and fears thy magazine of war.

• The speaker tells women to go and dress ("gird") themselves with grace. "Gird" basically means "to put something around your middle," like a belt or something. And since you'd wear a sword around your waist, "girding" yourself for battle might mean putting on a sword. But whether you think of "gird" as meaning simply to put on clothes, or to put on weapons, this is kind of weird. How can you wear "grace"? Or use "grace" as a weapon? Shmoop smells a metaphor. 
• And, as it turns out it's actually a pretty common metaphor. It gets used in the Judeo-Christian scriptures a fair amount: people are told to "gird themselves" with some good quality or other, like strength or endurance. 
• We've got another metaphor on our hands: the speaker tells women to go and pick up their collection of weapons ("artillery"), but she's not talking about regular weapons, no sir.
• Women have special, metaphorical weapons: instead of the bang of a cannon, women have a tender, "melting" tone of voice. 
• A "magazine of war" isn't like People or Sports Illustrated for the military—in this context, a "magazine" is a warehouse where weapons are stored. And again, the speaker is saying that women have special, metaphorical weapons in their warehouse: their "blushes" and "fears" are their secret weapons.
• So, to sum up this extended metaphor, the speaker is asking women to take over from men by using "grace" as their armor and a soft tone of voice, blushes, and fears as their weapons.
• Again, though, if Barbauld wants women to kick out the dudes, why is she calling up all these stereotypes of women being soft and meek? Why the contradiction? Is Barbauld just saying that women should use their feminine wiles to basically trick men into letting them rule?

Lines 13-16

Thy rights are empire: urge no meaner claim,-
Felt, not defined, and if debated, lost;
Like sacred mysteries, which withheld from fame,
Shunning discussion, are revered the most.

• The speaker says that women have a right to "empire"—in other words, to rule over the whole world, not just their own country, and certainly not just the home. 
• It sure seems like the speaker is getting a bit more ambitious than she was back in Stanza 1, when she said that a woman's natural "empire" was over the realm of emotions. Now, women have a right to empire in general.
• According to her, women shouldn't settle for anything less ("meaner"= "less").
• She says that the question isn't even open for debate—if women start to debate this, they're going to lose. It's a question that you can only answer in your gut, with your feelings, but you can't "define" it with your head.
• She uses a simile to compare women's rights to something that is sacred or divine that you're not allowed to talk openly about—if you keep the issue from being discussed in the open, it will get respected more. Shmoopers, this seems weird for a number of reasons. 
• First, if the poem is supposed to be a criticism of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, this is way off the mark—Wollstonecraft never once said that women's rights shouldn't be discussed or debated. In fact, she really, really wanted to encourage people to start thinking about and discussing these issues. 
• So did Barbauld not read Wollstonecraft closely enough? Or is she being ironic, and making fun of other critics of Wollstonecraft? Hard to say.
• Second thing: early feminists used to complain that men were keeping them confined to the house and out of sight of the world. Men (and some women) said that being kept out of sight most of the time made people respect them more. Women themselves were "sacred," according to this logic. So is Barbauld using what was traditionally an anti-feminist attitude (that sacred things shouldn't be discussed or debated and should be kept out of sight) as a pro-feminist argument that women's rights are so sacred that they shouldn't even be debated? Or is she making fun of the feminists for what she felt was a silly way of shutting down debate? Again, it's hard to say.