Poems of Sentiment | Page 9

and gold she saw?Prove mightier than the sternest law?With judge and jury, priest and king;?So, made herself an offering?At Mammon's shrine; and lived for power,?And ease, and pleasures of the hour.
Who looks beneath life's outer crust?Is satisfied that God is just;?Who looks not under, but about,?Finds much to make him sad with doubt.?For Virtue walks with feet worn bare,?While Sin rides by with coach and pair:?Men praise the modest heart and chaste,?And yet they let it go to waste,?And follow, fierce to have and hold,?Some creature, wanton, selfish, bold.
She saw but this, life's outer side,?No higher faith was hers to guide;?She worshipped gold, and hated toil,?And hence her youth with all its soil,?With all its sins too dark to name,?Of secret crimes and public shame,?With all its trail of broken lives,?Of ruined homes, neglected wives,?And weeping mothers. Proud and gay?She went her devastating way?With untouched brow and fadeless grace.
Not time, but feeling, marks the face.?Sin on the outer being tells?Not till the startled soul rebels:?And she felt nothing but content.?She was too light and indolent?To worry over days to come.?This little earth held all life's sum,?She thought, and to be young and fair,?Well clothed, well fed, was all her care.?With pitying eyes and lifted head?She gazed on those who toiled for bread,?And laughed to scorn the talk she heard?Of punishment for those who erred,?And virtue's certain recompense.?She seemed devoid of moral sense,?An ignorant thing whose appetites?Bound her horizon of delights.
Men were her puppets to control;?Unconscious of a heart or soul?She lived, and gloried in the ease?She purchased by her power to please?The eye and senses. Life's one woe?Which caused her pitying tears to flow?Was poverty. Though hearts might break?And homes be ruined for her sake,?She showed no mercy. But when need?Of gold she saw, her heart would bleed.?The lack of clothing, fire, and food?Was earth's one pain, she understood.
The suffering poor oft blest her name,?Nor questioned whence the ducats came,?She gave so freely. Once she found?A fainting woman on the ground,?A wailing child clasped to her breast.?With her own hands she bathed and dressed?The weary waifs! gave food and gold?And clothed them warmly from the cold,?Nor guessed that one she lured from home?Had caused that suffering pair to roam?Unhoused, neglected. Then one day,?Unheralded across her way,?The conqueror came. She knew not why,?But with the first glance of his eye?A feeling, new and unexplained,?Woke in her what she oft had feigned.?And when his arm stole near her waist,?As startled maidens blush with chaste?Sweet fear at love's advances, so?She blushed from brow to breast of snow.?Strange, new emotions, fraught with joy?And pain commingled, made her coy;?But when he would have clasped her neck?With gems that might a queen bedeck?And offered gold, her lips grew white?With sudden anger at the sight?Of what had been her god for years.?She flung them from her. Then such tears?As only spring from love's despair?Welled from her eyes. "So, lady fair,?My gifts are scorned?" quoth he, and laughed.?"Like Cleopatra, you have quaffed?Such lordly pearls in draughts of wine,?You spurn poor simple gems like mine.?Well, well, fair queen, I'll bring to you?A richer gift next time. Adieu."
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