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,
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.
'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 husbands, each
confirms the other's tale—
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
And She knows, because She warns him, and
Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more
deadly than the Male.
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