One Woman's History

"The maiden free, the maiden wed.
Can never, never be the same,
A new life springs from out the dead
And with the speaking of a name--
A breath upon the marriage bed,
She finds herself a something new.

"Where lay the shallows of the maid
No plummet line the wife can sound;
Where round the sunny islands played
The pulses of the great profound
Lies low the treacherous everglade.

"A wife is like an unknown sea,
Least known to him who thinks he knows
Where all the shores of Promise be,
And where the islands of Repose--
And where the rocks that he must flee."