By Laetitia Pilkington
I ask not wit, nor beauty do I crave,
Nor wealth, nor pompous titles wish to have;
But since, ’tis doomed through all degrees of life,
Whether a daughter, sister, or a wife;
That females should the stronger males obey,
And yield implicit to their lordly sway;
Since this, I say, is ev’ry woman’s fate,
Give me a mind to suit my slavish state.
Source: English Women's Poetry, Elizabethan to Victorian (edited by R.E. Pritchard) (Fyfield Books, 1990)
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