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She hid her face upon her knees,
And swayed as reeds sway in a breeze.
“O Christ,” she moaned, “could I forget,
There might be something for me yet:
But though both God and man forgave,
And I should win the love I crave,
Why, memory would drive me mad.”

When woman drifts from good to bad,
To make her final fall complete,
She puts her soul beneath her feet.
Man’s dual selves seem separate;
He leaves his soul outside sin’s gate,
And finds it waiting when he tires
Of carnal pleasures and desires,
Depleted, sickened, and depressed,
As souls must be with such a test,
Yet strong enough to help him grope
Back into happiness and hope.
But woman, far more complicate,
Can take no chances with her fate;
A subtle creature, finely spun,
Her body and her soul are one.
And now this erring woman wept
The soul she murdered while it slept.
She felt too stunned with pain to think.
She seemed to stand upon a brink;
Behind her loomed the sinful past,
Below her, rocks, beyond her, vast
And awful darkness. Not one ray
Of sun or star to show the way!
She drew a long and shuddering breath;
“There is no other path but death
For me to tread,” she sighed, “and so
I will prepare my house and go.”

As housewives move with willing feet
And skilful hands to make things neat
And ready for some welcome one,
She toiled until her tasks were done.
Then, seated at her desk, she wrote,
With painful care, a tear-wet note.
The childish penmanship was rude,
Ill spelled the words, the phrasing crude;
Yet thought and feeling both were there,
And mighty love and great despair.
“Dear heart,” it ran, “you did not know
How, from the first, I loved you so,
That sin grew hateful in my sight;
And so I leave it all to-night.
The kiss I gave, dear heart, to you
Was love’s first kiss, as pure and true
As ever lips of maiden gave.
I think ’twill warm my lonely grave,
And light the pathway I must tread
Among the hapless, homeless dead.

“When God formed worlds, He failed to make
A path for erring feet to take
Back into light and peace again,
Unless they were the feet of men.
When woman errs, and then regrets,
Her sun of hope for ever sets,
And life is hung with deepest gloom.
In all the world there is no room
For such as she; and so I hold
That death itself is not so cold
As life has seemed, since by love’s light
I saw there was a wrong and right,
And that my birthright had been sold,
By my own hands, for tarnished gold.
I hated labour, hence I fell;
But now I love you, dear, so well,
No greater boon my soul could crave
Than just to toil, a galley-slave,
Through burdened years and years of life,
If at the last you called me wife
For one supreme and honoured hour.
Alas! too late I learn love’s power,
Too late I realise my loss,
And have no strength to bear my cross
Of loneliness and dark disgrace.
There cannot be another place
So desolate, so full of fear,
As earth to me, without you, dear.

“You will not understand, I know,
How one like me can love you so.
It was a strange, strange thing. Love came
So like a swift, devouring flame
And burned my frail, fair-weather boat
And left me on the waves afloat,
With nothing but a broken spar.
The distant shores seem very far;
I cannot reach them, so I sink.
God will forgive my sins, I think,
Because I die for love, like One
The good Book tells about, His Son.