Page:Poems Sherwin.djvu/93

 With bitter grief the astonished wife
Soon found herself a slave for life:
Still she exerted all her power,
To render sweet her woodland bower;
Tried every means her spouse to please,
Pictured a life of bliss and ease,
And fondly soothed him all day long;
Tried reason's power—tried sweetest song—
But saw 'twas useless, and grew mute,—
For who can reason with a brute?
So gentle and so mild was she,—
So rough, so brutalized was he,
In stuffing morning, noon and night,—
To eat and drink all his delight,
And, with companions like himself,
He grew a beastly sottish elf,
For ever rolling in the mire,
With language foul in bitter ire.
Blaspheming ever, still in strife,
Abusing all, but most his wife.

 The fated nightingale grew sad,
And pined, though all around was glad;
She sighed, with aching heart, to be
As erst, unshackled, wild and free.
How ardently she longed to fly,
And skim again the clear blue sky,—
To gain once more her native bower,
And taste the sweets of mead and flower;
But firm was tied old Hymen's knot,
Fluttering and struggling mattered not,—