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when we live no more, we may live ever.

To Margo
    GAVIN EWART
    In life’s rough-and-tumble
    you’re the crumble on my apple crumble
    and the fairy on my Christmas tree!
    In life’s death-and-duty
    you’ve the beauty of the Beast’s own Beauty—
    I feel humble as a bumble-bee!
    In life’s darkening duel
    I’m the lighter, you’re the lighter fuel—
    and the tide that sways my inland sea!
    In life’s meet-and-muster
    you’ve the lustre of a diamond cluster—
    a blockbuster—just a duster, me!

A Word to Husbands
    OGDEN NASH
    To keep your marriage brimming,
    With love in the loving cup,
    Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
    Whenever you’re right, shut up.

To the Ladies
    LADY MARY CHUDLEIGH
    Wife and servant are the same,
    But only differ in the name:
    For when that fatal knot is tied,
    Which nothing, nothing can divide:
    When she the word obey has said,
    And man by law supreme has made,
    Then all that’s kind is laid aside,
    And nothing left but state and pride:
    Fierce as an Eastern prince he grows,
    And all his innate rigour shows:
    Then but to look, to laugh, or speak,
    Will the nuptial contract break.
    Like mutes she signs alone must make,
    And never any freedom take:
    But still be governed by a nod,
    And fear her husband as a God:
    Him still must serve, him still obey,
    And nothing act, and nothing say,
    But what her haughty lord thinks fit,
    Who with the power, has all the wit.
    Then shun, oh! shun that wretched state,
    And all the fawning flatt’rers hate:
    Value your selves, and men despise,
    You must be proud, if you’ll be wise.

The Female of the Species
    RUDYARD KIPLING
    When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
    He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
    But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
    For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
    When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
    He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it as he can.
    But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
    For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
    When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
    They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
    â€™Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
    For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
    Man’s timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
    For the Woman that God gave him isn’t his to give away;
    But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the other’s tale—
    The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
    Man, a bear in most relations—worm and savage otherwise,—
    Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
    Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
    To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.
    Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
    To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
    Mirth obscene diverts his anger! Doubt and Pity oft perplex
    Him in dealing with an issue—to the scandal of The Sex!
    But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
    Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
    And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
    The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.
    She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
    May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest.
    These be purely male diversions—not in these her honour dwells.
    She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.
    She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
    As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate!
    And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
    Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.
    She is wedded to convictions—in