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