“My son was killed in battle, and I say
No foe however great, no awful threat
Is worth the price a mother has to pay,
To see a son cut down, her baby yet.
The son I nurtured, brought forth from the womb,
Because some evil persons in a land
So far from here, have laid him in a tomb,
Forever dead, and I don’t understand.
They tell me that he die to serve his country,
And gave his life, that others may breathe free,
But this, and half a dozen reasons sundry
Can’t justify their taking him from me.
Mothers, give birth to daughters, not to sons,
Nor let them feed the slaughters of the guns."