FullReads

His light words stung like lash of whip;
With gasping breath and ashen lip
She strove to speak, but he was gone
She kneeled and pressed her mouth upon
The latch his hand had touched, the floor
His foot had trod, and o’er and o’er
She sobbed his name, as children moan
A mother’s name when left alone.

Out from the dim and roseate gloom
And subtle odours of her room
Accusing memories rose. She felt
A loneliness that seemed to belt
The universe in its embrace.
It was as if from some high place
A giant hand had reached and hurled
To nothingness her petty world,
And left her staring, awed, alone,
Up into regions vast, unknown.
There is no other loneliness
That can so sadden and oppress
As when beside the burned-out fire
Of sated passion and desire
The wakening spirit, in a glance,
Beholds its lost inheritance.
She rose and turned the dim lights higher,
Brought forth rich gems and grand attire,
And robed herself in feverish haste;
Before the mirror posed and paced,
With jewels on her breast and wrists;
Then sudden clenched her little fists
And beat her face until it bled,
And tore her garments shred from shred,
Gazed in the mirror, spoke her name
And hissed a word that told her shame,
Then on her knees fell sobbing there.

There are sweet messengers of prayer
Who down through space on soft wings steal,
And offer aid to all who kneel.
Her lips, unused to pious phrase,
Recalled some words of bygone days,
And “Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,”
She whispered timidly, and then,
“Lord, let me be a child again
And grow up good.” The strange prayer said,
Like some o’er-weary child, her head
She pillowed on her arm, and wept
Low, shuddering sobs, until she slept
And dreamed; and in that dream she thought
She sat within a vine-wreathed cot;
An infant slumbered on her breast,
She crooned a lullaby, and pressed
Its waxen hand against her cheek,
While one, too proud and fond to speak,
The happy father of the child,
Stood near, and gazing on them, smiled.

She woke while still the lullaby
Was on her lips–then such a cry,
As souls in fabled realms below
Might utter, voiced her awful woe.

The mighty moral labour-pain
Of new-born conscience wracked her brain
And tore her soul. She understood
The meaning now of womanhood,
And chastity, and o’er her came
The full, dark sense of all her shame.
As some poor drunken wretch, at night,
Wakes up to know his piteous plight,
And sees, while sinking in the mire,
Afar, his waiting hearth-light’s fire;
So now she saw from depths of sin
The hearth-light of the might-have-been.
How beautiful, how like a star
That lost light shone, but ah, how far!

She reached her longing arms toward space,
And lifted up her tear-wet face.
“O God,” she wailed, “I have been bad!
I see it all, and I am sad,
And long to be a good girl now.
Lord, Lord, will some one show me how?
Why, men have trod the burning track
Of sin for years, and then gone back!
And cannot I for sin atone,
Or did Christ die for men alone?
I want to lead an honest life,
I want to be his own true wife
And hold upon my breast his child.”
Then suddenly her voice grew wild,
“No, no,” she cried, “it could not be –
Those infant eyes would torture me:
Though God condoned my sinful ways,
I could not meet my child’s pure gaze.”