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,