The Female Ward

Henry Lawson, 1909

      Her eyes would brim to Heaven,
      Her heart beat cold to hell,
      The lie was glib and ready,
      The truth she could not tell;
      It mattered not how friendly
      She might have seemed before;
      She'd gall the man she married
      If the servant passed the door.

      She hated without reason,
      She brooded, at her best,
      She'd scowl at him in public
      And smile at all the rest —
      A liar of the liars,
      And bad as fiends are bad —
      And everyone believed her,
      Nor dreamed that she was mad.
      She is what men call "dangerous"
      Wherever she might be,
      And men have hanged, or rotted
      In gaol for such as she;
      The women rave about her
      And the Villainy of Men,
      And she herself dies raving
      In some low Chinese den.