Mother, I have not

III

however their tongues may have babbled of me Sinn'd thro' an animal vileness, for all but a dwarf was he,

And all but a hunchback too; and I look'd at him, first, askance,

With pity- not he the knight for an amorous girl's romance! Tho' wealthy enough to have bask'd in the light of a dowerless smile, Having lands at home and abroad in a rich West-Indian isle;

But I came on him once at a ball, the heart of a listening crowd

Why, what a brow was there! he was seated-speaking aloud

To women, the flower of the time, and men at the helm of state

Flowing with easy greatness and touching on all things great,

Science, philosophy, song self ready to weep

50

- till I felt my

For I knew not what, when I heard that voice, as mellow and deep

As a psalm by a mighty master and peal'd from an organ,

roll

Rising and falling - for, mother, the voice was the voice of the soul;

And the sun of the soul made day in the dark of his wonderful eyes.

Here was the hand that would help me, would heal me- the heart that was

wise!

When he clothed a naked mind with the wisdom and wealth of his own,

And I bow'd myself down as a slave to his intellectual throne,

When he coin'd into English gold some treasure of classical song,

When he flouted a statesman's error, or flamed at a public wrong,

When he rose as it were on the wings of an eagle beyond me, and past Over the range and the change of the world from the first to the last, When he spoke of his tropical home in the canes by the purple tide,

70

And the high star-crowns of his palms on the deep-wooded mountain-side, And cliffs all robed in lianas that dropt to the brink of his bay,

And trees like the towers of a minster, the sons of a winterless day.

'Paradise there!' so he said, but I seem'd in Paradise then

With the first great love I had felt for the first and greatest of men;

Ten long days of summer and sin—if it must be so

But days of a larger light than I ever again shall know

Days that will glimmer, I fear, thro' life to my latest breath;

'No frost there,' so he said, 'as in truest love no death.'

VI

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Mother, one morning a bird with a warble plaintively sweet

Perch'd on the shrouds, and then fell fluttering down at my feet;

I took it, he made it a cage, we fondled it, Stephen and I,

But it died, and I thought of the child for a moment, I scarce know why.

VII

But if sin be sin, not inherited fate, as many will say,

My sin to my desolate little one found me at sea on a day,

When her orphan wail came borne in the shriek of a growing wind,

And a voice rang out in the thunders of ocean and heaven, 'Thou hast sinn'd.' And down in the cabin were we, for the towering crest of the tides

For, ah, God! what a heart was mine to forsake her even for you!'

'Never the heart among women,' he said, 6 more tender and true.'

'The heart! not a mother's heart, when I left my darling alone.' 'Comfort yourself, for the heart of the father will care for his own.' The heart of the father will spurn her,' I cried, for the sin of the wife,

The cloud of the mother's shame will enfold her and darken her life.'

you,

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Then his pale face twitch'd. 'O Stephen,
I love I love you, and yet'
As I lean'd away from his arms — ' would
God, we had never met!'

And he spoke not only the storm; till after a little, I yearn'd

For his voice again, and he call'd to me, 'Kiss me !' and there

turn'd

-

as I

Till I woke from the trance, and the ship stood still, and the skies were blue, But the face I had known, O mother, was not the face that I knew.

IX

The strange misfeaturing mask that I saw so amazed me that I

Stumbled on deck, half mad. I would fling myself over and die :

But one- - he was waving a flag- the one man left on the wreck

'Woman,' he graspt at my arm, - ́stay there!' I crouch'd upon deck'We are sinking, and yet there's hope:

look yonder,' he cried, 'a sail ! ' 121 In a tone so rough that I broke into passionate tears, and the wail

Of a beaten babe, till I saw that a boat was nearing us- then

All on a sudden I thought, I shall look on the child again.

Three days since, three more dark days of the Godless gloom

Of a life without sun, without health, without hope, without any delight

In anything here upon earth? but, ah, God that night, that night

murder, and

wrong.

496

Ah, God, should we find Him, perhaps, per haps, if we died, if we died; We never had found Him on earth, this earth is a fatherless hell'Dear love, for ever and ever, for ever and ever farewell!'

Never a cry so desolate, not since the world began,

Never a kiss so sad, no, not since the coming of man!

X

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But the blind wave cast me ashore, and you saved me, a valueless life. Not a grain of gratitude mine! You have parted the man from the wife. I am left alone on the land, she is all alone in the sea;

If a curse meant aught, I would curse you for not having let me be.

XI

Visions of youth for my brain was drunk with the water, it seems;

I had past into perfect quiet at length out of pleasant dreams,

And the transient trouble of drowningwhat was it when match'd with the pains

Of the hellish heat of a wretched life rushing back thro' the veins?