| |
1911
WHEN the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride, | |
| He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside. | |
| But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail. | |
| For the female of the species is more deadly than the male. | |
| |
| When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man, | 5 |
| He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can | |
| But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail. | |
| For the female of the species is more deadly than the male. | |
| |
| When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws, | |
| They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws. | 10 |
| ’Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale. | |
| For the female of the species is more deadly than the male. | |
| |
| Man’s timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say, | |
| For the Woman that God gave him isn’t his to give away; | |
| But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the other’s tale— | 15 |
| The female of the species is more deadly than the male. | |
| |
| Man, a bear in most relations—worm and savage otherwise,— | |
| Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise. | |
| Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact | |
| To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act. | 20 |
| |
| Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low, | |
| To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe. | |
| Mirth obscene diverts his anger—Doubt and Pity oft perplex | |
| Him in dealing with an issue—to the scandal of The Sex! | |
| |
| But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame | 25 |
| Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same; | |
| And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail, | |
| The female of the species must be deadlier than the male. | |
| |
| She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast | |
| May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest. | 30 |
| These be purely male diversions—not in these her honour dwells. | |
| She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else. | |
| |
| She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great | |
| As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate. | |
| And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim | 35 |
| Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same. | |
| |
| She is wedded to convictions—in default of grosser ties; | |
| Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!— | |
| He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild, | |
| Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child. | 40 |
| |
| Unprovoked and awful charges—even so the she-bear fights, | |
| Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons—even so the cobra bites, | |
| Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw | |
| And the victim writhes in anguish—like the Jesuit with the squaw! | |
| |
| So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer | 45 |
| With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her | |
| Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands | |
| To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands. | |
| |
| And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him | |
| Must command but may not govern—shall enthral but not enslave him. | 50 |
| And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail, | |
| That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male. | |
| |
