A Double Standard
Can you blame me if I've learned to think
Your hate of vice a sham,
When you so coldly crushed me down
And then excused the man?
By Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Do you blame me that I loved him?
If when standing all alone
I cried for bread a careless world
Pressed to my lips a stone.
Would you blame me if tomorrow
The coroner should say,
A wretched girl, outcast, forlorn
Has thrown her life away?
Do you blame me that I loved him
That my heart beat glad and free,
When he told me in the sweetest tones
He loved but only me?
Yes, blame me for my downward course,
But oh! remember well,
Within your homes you press the hand
That led me down to hell.
Can you blame me that I did not see
Beneath his burning kiss
The serpent's wiles, nor even hear
The deadly adder hiss?
I'm glad God's ways are not our ways,
He does not see as man,
Within His love I know there's room
For those whom others ban.
Can you blame me that my heart grew cold
That the tempted, tempter turned;
When he was feted and caressed
And I was coldly spurned?
I think before His great white throne,
His throne of spotless light,
That whited sepulchers shall wear
The hue of endless night.
Would you blame him, when you draw from me
Your dainty robes aside
If he with gilded baits should claim
Your fairest as his bride?
That I who fell, and he who sinned
Shall reap as we have sown;
That each the burden of his loss
Must bear and bear alone.
Would you blame the world if it should press
On him a civic crown;
And see me struggling in the depth
Then harshly press me down?
No golden weights can turn the scale
Of justice in His sight;
And what is wrong in woman's life
In man's cannot be right.
Crime has no sex and yet today
I wear the brand of shame;
Whilst he amid the gay and proud
Still bears an honored name.
