Suffrage Songs and Verses

Chapter 3: Coming

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About This Book

A collection of poems and songs that urge women's political enfranchisement and social reform, blending moral argument, satire, and lyrical reflection. Several pieces reframe motherhood and domestic labor as public responsibilities, converting private care into a reason for civic participation; others mock anti-suffrage rationales and challenge female passivity. The verse alternates earnest exhortation, vivid domestic scenes, and rallying refrains to encourage collective action, education, and self-recognition. Overall it presents suffrage as necessary for family welfare and social progress, urging women to move from seclusion to engaged public life.

COMING f

Because the time is ripe, the age is ready,

Because the world her woman’s help demands,

Out of the long subjection and seclusion

Come to our field of warfare and confusion

The mother’s heart and hands.

Long has she stood aside, endured and waited,

While man swung forward, toiling on alone;

Now, for the weary man, so long ill-mated,

Now, for the world for which she was created,

Comes woman to her own.

Not for herself! though sweet the air of freedom;

Not for herself, though dear the new-born power;

But for the child, who needs a nobler mother,

For the whole people, needing one another,

Comes woman to her hour.