White and strong in your motherhood;
You with your wedding ring safe on your finger,
You who can linger, righteous and clean in love’s embrace:
Tell me the reason that I am base!
Are you so different after all?
I answered the same high golden call
I yielded to love that is proud of pain—
Love, that reckoned not for gain;
And nature has made my child so fair,
As the child on your very shoulder there.