You do but jest, sir, and you jest not well, <br />How could the hand be enemy of the arm, <br />Or seed and sod be rivals! How could light <br />Feel jealousy of heat, plant of the leaf <br />Or competition dwell 'twixt lip and smile? <br />Are we not part and parcel of yourselves? <br />Like strands in one great braid we intertwine <br />And make the perfect whole. You could not be, <br />Unless we gave you birth; we are the soil <br />From which you sprang, yet sterile were that soil <br />Save as you planted. (Though in the Book we read <br />One woman bore a child with no man's aid <br />We find no record of a man-child born <br />Without the aid of woman! Fatherhood <br />Is but a small achievement at the best <br />While motherhood comprises heaven and hell.) <br />This ever-growing argument of sex <br />Is most unseemly, and devoid of sense. <br />Why waste more time in controversy, when <br />There is not time enough for all of love, <br />Our rightful occupation in this life. <br />Why prate of our defects, of where we fail <br />When just the story of our worth would need <br />Eternity for telling, and our best <br />Development comes ever thro' your praise, <br />As through our praise you reach your highest self. <br />Oh! had you not been miser of your praise <br />And let our virtues be their own reward <br />The old established, order of the world <br />Would never have been changed. Small blame is ours <br />For this unsexing of ourselves, and worse <br />Effeminizing of the male. We were <br />Content, sir, till you starved us, heart and brain. <br />All we have done, or wise, or otherwise <br />Traced to the root, was done for love of you. <br />Let us taboo all vain comparisons, <br />And go forth as God meant us, hand in hand, <br />Companions, mates and comrades evermore; <br />Two parts of one divinely ordained whole.<br /><br />Ella Wheeler Wilcox<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/woman-to-man-3/
