Ten Poems for National Poetry Month, Number 3: 'My Little Suffragette' by Thaddeus A. Browne

For the month, the third of ten poems

I find interesting, amusing, and/or infuriating.

Thaddeus A. Browne had a decades-long career as an Ottawa civil servant, though his Citizen obituary (9 March 1935) makes more about his standing as a literary figure.

I'm not sure that Browne was a widely known as a writer of poems and prose; I'd never encountered his name before buying The White Plague and Other Poems (Toronto: William Briggs, 1909). Of its twenty-two poems, 'My Little Suffragette' is the second to take on soldiers in petticoats. 

MY LITTLE SUFFRAGETTE

                         Little blue-eyed suffragette,
                         What for suffrage calling yet?
                         Stop your worry, cease your fret,
                              Don't you see the harm it brings? 

                         If a vote were given you,
                         Many things no doubt you'd do,

                         You might mould the world anew

                              As upon its course it swings. 

                         But I want to tell you this,

                         Winsome little suffrage miss,

                         You are keeping me from bliss

                              By your interest in such things. 

                         You have worried my poor mind,

                         You have been to me unkind;

                         Good it is that Love is blind,

                              Or he might have taken wings. 

                         What! you did it just to tease!

                         Little minx, give me a squeeze.

                         Love you give me ecstasies

                              What's your choice of wedding rings?

Remarkably, the poet did marry... though not until middle age.

 Thaddeus Augustine Browne
1878-1935
RIP