Woman's Voice

by Unknown

A Pageant of Great Women

By Cicily Hamilton

A dramatic poem of power and beauty. Woman contends with prejudice in an argument before the throne of Justice, calling a pageant of the world’s great women to justify her claims. She wins her freedom and speaks to man as follows:

I have no quarrel with you, but I stand

For the clear right to hold my life my own:

The clear, clean right. To mould it as I will,—

Not as you will, with or apart from you

To make of it a thing of brain and blood,

Of tangible substance and of turbulent thought—

No thin, gray shadow of the life of man!

Your love, perchance, may set a crown on it;

But I may crown myself in other ways—

(As you have done, who are in one flesh with me).

I have no quarrel with you; but, henceforth

This you must know: The world is mine as yours—

The pulsing strength and passion and hurt of it:

The work I set my hand to, woman’s work,

Because I set my hand to it.