The Selector’s Wife Poem by Mary Eliza Fullerton

The quick compunction cannot serve;
She saw the flash,
Ere he had bent with busy hand
And drooping lash.

She saw him mark for the first time,
With critic eye,
What five years’ heavy toil had done
’Neath roof and sky.

And always now so sensitive
Her poor heart is,
That moment will push in between
His kindest kiss.

The moment when he realised
Her girlhood done—
The truth her glass had long revealed
Of beauty gone.

Until some future gracious flash
Shall let each know
That that which drew and holds him yet
Shall never go.