I Have No Quarrel with You

I have no quarrel with you; but I stand
For the clear right to hold my life my own;
The clean, clear right. To mold it as I will,
Not as you will, with or apart from you;
To make of it a thing of brain and blood,
Of tangible substance and of turbulent thought.
No thin gray shadow of the life of man.
Your love, perchance, may set a crown upon it;
But I may crown myself in other ways.
As you have done who are one flesh with me.
I have no quarrel with you — but henceforth,
This you must know; the world is mine, as yours,
The pulsing strength and passion and heart of it;
The work I set my hand to, women’s work,
Because I set my hand to it.

 

Florence Brooks Whitehouse (1869-1945) Whitehouse was active in securing the right to vote for women in Maine. She wrote and recited this poem to the Judiciary Committee of the Maine Legislature in 1917.