Who is the bravest?

Who is the bravest?

Who is the bravest of them all?
The woman who takes a man
to have and hold.

She puts her life into his hands;
Follows him through thick,
when things are thin;

Unsure, when time outlasts
her outer beauty,
if he will yet behold the loveliness within...

Skin deep, love is shallow
like a summer stream
that babbles through the hollow
'til the fall - fair words; what do they really mean?

Will such a shallow turn to ice come winter's freeze?
Though a truly virtuous woman may be rare,
rarer still the man with eyes to see
the virtue there.

And wise his is, though through the day
about his business, here and there he roams,
who nightly will, to find such virtue
turn again to house and home.

© Paul McFate
February 2007