Relentless fate to thee unkind, O thou
Of rigid oblong face and planished brow,
With bony arms protruding down your side,
In stiff conceit, unbending as your pride,
What darling right hath been to thee denied?
O prim propriety, dost grieve because
Too quick relief from Indiana’s laws
O’ertook your unconsidered application
And left you cheerless on a drear plantation—
A lonely leafless trunk in grim repose
Amid divorce’s chill and loveless snows,
Both vice and virtue flying from your soul
As torrid summers fly the icy pole?
Fastidious pink! whose hypersens’tive notion
No suff’rance bore for animal emotion,
Who pleaded, uncongenial elevation
Had raised you o’er the master of creation—
I’ll risk a random guess, incarnate fair,
You rue the hour that made you as you are.
Perchance ’tis thou, O dusky sprite petite
Of modest air and soulful murmurs sweet,
Whose glad hosannas ring with joy complete
To full admiring houses at your feet?
Or thou, histronic dame, enkindling dreams
Of olive groves, and burning orient beams?
Ah! no, ye lucky ones! ye have the right
To charm a list’ning world with dear delight
And win two hundred dollars in a night.
Ah! ye sly cats, who licks the cream of life
In character of widow, maid, or wife;
Then, purring sweetly rub your silky skins
In sweet cajol’ry on our rugged shins,
’Tis cruel, is it not? bareing to view
Secrets deftly covered up by you?
’Tis cruel, is it not? to lift your paws
And draw the velvet from your pitless claws?
Cruel, to scout your immemorial claim
To innocence, and block the cosy game
You’ve played since Adam, our deluded sire,
Raked chestnuts for his siren from the fire?
What if we let you have your childish way
To bear the heat and burden of a day—
To rear the homes and fortresses and guard
The nation with the nightly watch and ward?
Ye’ll deem the compensation wondrous small
To make the laws ye must enforce for all!
But why on man the awful burden load
Of human miseries decreed of God?
Why charge to him all sorrow since the fall
When well ye know ’tis heritage of all?
Hath woman’s fearful sorrow made you mad
That ye exemption claim you never had?
Such calumny unjust ’tis burning shame
To heap on father’s, brother’s, husband’s name.
Think ye to rear on fancies such as this
The fallen altar of domestic bliss?
Its temple reconstruct with sand and chaff?
You’d better reconstruct yourselves by half!
What need of all this stir, this noisy blow—
This vain parade of wrongs, this empty show?
Go back, ye rebels! seek your native air—
Be happy in the way your mothers were!
Go sit at Jesus’ feet, meek pupils there
And wipe them with your penitential hair!
That woman hath more wrongs, with man they cause,
Than man, from being woman’s partner draws,
Is false as——well, I would not wish to swear,
But truth I’ll tell, for truth is only fair,
And, since ye dare the reading of the roll
Ye can’t complain when I display the scroll.
Go through the town, inquire from street, to street,
And this the truthful record ye shall meet.
A hundred men shall study day and night
How best promote the family’s delight;
And ten are sunk beneath the base control
Of vice, in hopeless servitude of soul.
A hundred men shall gather worldly pelf,
While each shall spend a tithe upon himself;
And ten shall waste in drink and gambling hall
Their children’s patrimony and their all.
A hundred men, with true parental care
Their sons shall guide and guard their daughters fair;
And ten shall school their brood in street and dust
Regardless of their highest holiest trust.
A hundred men shall, in their av’rage rate,
The manly part perform in home and state;
And ten, by selfishness and devilish hate
Humanity shall fairly desecrate.
Aforetime, woman dear, ’twas so with you,
And shall be so again—for God is true,
Nor will forget to gather, as of old,
His wand’ring children in the heav’nly fold.
When clothed upon ye are, in calmer hour,
By soberness, and clad in reason’s pow’r,
Ye’ll marvel at the mad delirium
And weird delusions that with fever come.
Then man shall, softened, bend his lofty pride—
Then both restored shall journey side by side,
And common love shall be the common guide.
It’s not of swillers, sots and blocks, I talk;
I mean good sturdy anglo-saxon stock.
Let these arise, assume their rightful place,
And justly stamp the occidental race—
No more corrupt our honest mother tongue
By mixing alienisms thick among
The euphonies in which a Milton sung;
Nor shapeless Puritanic mongrel breed
By crop with Gallia’s atheistic creed.
Let man be what omniscient God designed,
And woman act the part of womankind.
Finis.