Nor prove too much for your womanhood.

It will come, I suspect, at the end of life,

When you walk alone, and review the past;

And I, who so long shall have done with strife,

And journeyed my stage and earned my wage

And retired as was right,—I am called at last

When the devil stabs you, to lend the knife.

He stabs for the minute of trivial wrong,

Nor the other hours are able to save,

The happy, that lasted my whole life long: