Explore "The Silent Tragedy" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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.