“False Womankind!”

ON READING A SLUR THAT WAS MADE ON HER BY THE LACK-LOVE GAY, OF QUEEN ANNE’S DAY.

“False womankind, false womankind!” Thus wails and rails a many a blind And foolish heart, too long confined Where light and love have never shined. E’en sweetest Shakespeare’s pen, embrined With biting bitterness of mind, “As false as woman’s love,” has whined. --Unkind the cut, the heart unkind.

“False womankind, false womankind!”-- I hurl the lie back from my mind To those who thus a wreath have twined Of roseless thorns to crown and bind A sister’s crown, or mother’s kind And sainted brow;--or twine and wind It, thorns and all, round heart and mind Of sweetheart-wife in love enshrined.

False, false the charge and false the mind That ever says “False womankind!” For the pæan ages wind Unto me this truth they find In the heart of humankind, In the human heart enshrined:-- “None so false and none so blind As whose loveless pens have lined

“What the heart has undermined, ‘False womankind, false womankind!’ None so true as her we find: None so pure of heart and mind, None so sweet and so refined, None so great and good and kind, None so in the heart enshrined As womankind, as womankind!”