Iv

"My husband! Ah, I thought sometime That I could do without him well, Communing with the heaven at prime, And in my womanhood could dwell Calm and sublime.

"Declining, with a playful strife, All thoughts below my own transcendence, All common-sense of earth and life, And counting it a poor dependence To be his wife,

"But now I know, by trouble's test, How little my poor strength can bear, What folly wisdom is, whene'er The grief is in the breast!

"The grief is in my breast, because I have not always been as kind As woman should, by nature's laws, But showed sometimes a wilful mind, Carping at straws.

"While he, perhaps, with larger eyne, Was pleased, instead of vexed, at seeing Some little petulance in mine, And loved me all the more, for being; Not too divine.

"Until the pride became a snare, The reason a deceit, wherein I dallied face to face with sinh And made a mortal pair.