The Women's Rose

I have an old, brown carved box; the lid is [broken:fine] and tied with a string. In it, I keep little squares of paper, with [hair:nail] inside, and a little picture which hung over my brother's bed when we were children, and other things as small. I have in it a rose. Other [women:men] also have such boxes where they keep such trifles, but no one has my rose. When my eye is dim, and my heart grows faint, and my faith in woman flickers, and her [present:past] is an agony to me, and her future a despair, the scent of that dead rose, withered for twelve years, comes back to [me:us] . I know there will be spring; as surely as the birds know it when they see above the snow two tiny, quivering green leaves. Spring cannot fail us.