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 husband, each confirms the other's tale,
That 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.
But the woman that God gave him, every fiber 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 d**h by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity, must not swerve or fact or jest
These are purely male diversions, not in these her honor dwells
She, the other law they live by is that law and nothing else
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.
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
While at war with life and conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some god of abstract justice that no woman understands
And man knows it- knows more over that the woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern, shall enthrall 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.