Not Understood and Other Poems/Woman’s Rights

by Thomas Bracken

 

WOMAN’S RIGHTS.

 

SOME people think that women should
  Compete in life’s swift race
With men, and gain each privilege,
  Position, power, and place
Which he enjoys. I can’t agree
  With those progressive lights;
I’ll tell you what appears to me
  To be fair woman’s rights.

When passion’s young ecstatic fire
  First kindles in our veins,
’Tis woman’s right to bind our hearts
  In Cupid’s rosy chains;
She wields a queenly sceptre then,
  Which we must needs obey,
We’re building castles in the night
  And dreaming all the day.

’Tis woman’s right to be caressed
  When love is in the spring,
And when affection’s harvest comes,
  Her right it is to bring
The garnered fruits of happiness
  To cheer man’s dreary way,
To smooth his rougher nature,
  And refine his coarser clay.

’Tis woman’s right to wean us from
  Our selfishness and greed,
A counsellor in trouble and
  A faithful friend in need.
’Tis woman’s right to lead us from
  The foot of Mammon’s throne,
And take us to a nobler shrine
  Where purer joys are known.

’Tis woman’s sacred right—and this
 To her by God is given—
To teach the lisping little ones
  The password into Heaven.
No joy man knows on earth can with
  A mother’s bliss compare
When, listening with the angel choir,
  She hears her child’s first prayer.

’Tis woman’s right to lean on man
  In sorrow and distress,
For he was made to comfort her,
  And she was made to bless;
Her bulwark against danger, be
  She daughter, sister, wife,
Or mother, he should guard her well—
  Aye, even with his life.

’Tis woman’s right, ere we prepare
  To battle in life’s van,
To shape our future destinies
  And mould the mind of man;
And here, where we’re erecting on
  Pacific’s breast a State
The mothers of our rising race
  Can make it poor or great.