To a dame with lots of gold and very little taste for verse.
Nice to be a Lion's Lady in Society, no doubt!
Not so nice to smooth his mane at home when Leo is put out.
Talk of tantrums! Read these lines he published after—well, the jilt,
Pitching into poor Mamma, and charging me with nameless guilt!
Dear Mamma! I thought her hard—but I'm a mother now myself,
And, I know what utter nonsense is the poet's scorn of pelf.
* * * *
"Woman is the lesser man!" I hold that false as it is hard.
The most womanish of creatures surely is an angry bard.