Poem for September 14, 2025

No fault in women, to refuse

The offer which they most would chuse.

--No fault: in women, to confess

How tedious they are in their dress;

--No fault in women, to lay on

The tincture of vermilion;

And there to give the cheek a dye

Of white, where Nature doth deny.

--No fault in women, to make show

Of largeness, when they're nothing so;

When, true it is, the outside swells

With inward buckram, little else.

--No fault in women, though they be

But seldom from suspicion free;

--No fault in womankind at all,

If they but slip, and never fall.