MY RIGHTS.

Yes, God has made me a woman,

And I am content to be

Just what He meant, not reaching out

For other things, since He

Who knows me best and loves me most has ordered this for me.

A woman, to live my life out

In quiet womanly ways,

Hearing the far-off battle,

Seeing as through a haze

The crowding, struggling world of men fight through their busy days.

I am not strong or valiant,

I would not join the fight

Or jostle with crowds in the highways

To sully my garments white;

But I have rights as a woman, and here I claim my right.

The right of a rose to bloom

In its own sweet, separate way,

With none to question the perfumed pink

And none to utter a nay

If it reaches a root or points, a thorn, as even a rose-tree may.

The right of the lady-birch to grow,

To grow as the Lord shall please,

By never a sturdy oak rebuked,

Denied nor sun nor breeze,

For all its pliant slenderness, kin to the stronger trees.

The right to a life of my own,—

Not merely a casual bit

Of somebody else's life, flung out

That, taking hold of it,

I may stand as a cipher does after a numeral writ.

The right to gather and glean

What food I need and can

From the garnered store of knowledge

Which man has heaped for man,

Taking with free hands freely and after an ordered plan.

The right — ah, best and sweetest!—

To stand all undismayed

Whenever sorrow or want or sin

Call for a woman's aid,

With none to call or question, by never a look gainsaid.

I do not ask for a ballot;

Though very life were at stake,

I would beg for the nobler justice

That men for manhood's sake

Should give ungrudgingly, nor withhold till I must fight and take.

The fleet foot and the feeble foot

Both seek the self-same goal,

The weakest soldier's name is writ

On the great army-roll,

And God, who made man's body strong, made too the woman's soul