The Truth of Woman

Woman's faith and woman's trust

Write the characters in the dust

Stamp them on the running stream

Print them on the moon's pale beam

And each evanescent letter

Shall be clearer, firmer, better

And more permanent, I ween

Than the thing those letters mean.

I have strain'd the spider's thread

' Gainst the promise of a maid

I have weigh'd a grain of sand

'Gainst her plight of heart and hand

I told my true love of the token

How her faith proved light, and her word was broken:

Again her word and truth she plight

And I believed them again ere light.