THE SILENT TRAGEDY

The deepest tragedies of life are not

Put into books, or acted on the stage.

Nay, they are lived in silence, by tense hearts

In homes, among dull unperceiving kin,

And thoughtless friends, who make a whip of words

Wherewith to lash these hearts, and call it wit.

There is a tragedy lived everywhere

In Christian lands, by an increasing horde

Of women martyrs to our social laws.

Women whose hearts cry out for motherhood;

Women whose bosoms ache for little heads;

Women God meant for mothers, but whose lives

Have been restrained, restricted, and denied

Their natural channels, till at last they stand

Unmated and alone, by that sad sea

Whose slow receding tide returns no more.

Men meet great sorrows; but no man can grasp

The depth, and height, of such a grief as this.

The call of Fatherhood is from man's brain.

Man cannot know the answer to that call

Save as a woman tells him. But to her

The call of Motherhood is from the soul,

The brain, the body. She is like a plant

Which buds and blossoms only to bear fruit.

Man is the pollen, carried by the wind

Of accident, or impulse, or desire;

And then his role of fatherhood is played.

Her threefold knowledge of maternity,

Through three times three great months, is hers alone.

Man as an egotist is wounded when

He is not father. Woman when denied

The all-embracing role of motherhood

Rebels with her whole being. Oftentimes

Rebellion finds its only utterance

In shattered nerves, and lack of self-control;

Which gives the merry world its chance to cry

‘ Old maids are queer.’

In far off Eastern lands

They think of God as Mother to the race;

Father and Mother of the Universe.

And mayhap this is why they make their girls

Wives prematurely, mothers over young,

Hoping to please their Mother God this way.

Since everywhere in Nature sex is shown

For procreative uses, they contend

Sterility is sinful. ( Save when one

Chooses a life of Saintship here on earth,

And so conserves all forces to that end. )

Here in the West, our God is Masculine;

And while we say He bade a Virgin bring

His Son to birth, we think of Him as One

Placing false values on forced continence -

Preparing heavens for those who live that life -

And hells for those who stray by thought or act

From the unnatural path our laws have made.

Mother of Christ, thou being woman, thou

Knowing all depths within the woman heart,

All joy, all pain, oh send the world more light.

Enlarge our sympathies; and let our minds

Turn from achievements of material things

To contemplation of Eternal truths.

Space throbs with egos, waiting for rebirth;

And mother-hearted women fill the earth.

Mother of Christ, show us the way to thin

The ranks of childless women, without sin.