Read this poem! Would like an opinion from all of you plz...
All woman-kind are of intellect deficient;
And the voluntary causes of all life’s ills.
Thou mayst be straight and even with them;
But they are crooked and wayward with thee.
Do them a thousand benefits and services;
Yet, at a single word, their hearts sulky grow.
They become poison unto thee, and kill thee—
They, whom thou deemest a healing balm.
They have no fidelity in their composition:
They are, naturally, unto perfidiousness prone.
Created, indeed, in the figure of mankind;
But, in reality, with no humanity in them.
They make thee out culpable, on a slight offence;
But they cannot be wrong, however great their sins.
The more crossness borne, the more petulant they:
The more whims brooked, the more capricious they grow.
In all things, they are fickle, and changeable:
Tame in tongue, * but untamable in heart.
They are beautiful in person, from head to foot;
But are like unto the wily serpent within.
Say no more about them, O KHUSHHAL!
It would be better had they never existed!
*Not always, at least, as far as the tongues of most English women go.
[Translation and foot note by captain H. G. Raverty ]
