'Twixt Kiss and Lip or Under the Sword. By the author of "Women Must Weep," [i.e. F. W. O. Ward] Third edition

In the dead of the night broke the clamour,
Upon horror-struck ears,
That yet found a delight and a glamour,
In the thrilling of fears;
When the last carriage now could scarce lumber,
Over crossing and stone,
In the silence and darkness of slumber,
Burst that terrible tone;
Amid howling of dogs as they trembled
At the glare splashing out,
And the shuffling of feet that assembled,
Came the sinister shout;
While policemen were bawling and running,
Rang that ominous din,
Of which even the deaf got no shunning,
Though they cowered within;
When the gas flickered faint, and seemed troubled
In strange daylight shed round,
The dread voice from all quarters redoubled,
With a funeral sound;
On the wings of dire tumult and terror,
To the turret and spire,
With no room for the fancies of error,
Rose the outcry of “Fire.”

With a laughter infernal and splutter,
In his mocking and game,
Up to attic and down to the gutter,
Sprang the Demon of Flame;
As a whirlpool, with famine of suction
That was cruel and short,
In the mirth that to man was destruction,
And to him only sport;
Danced on window sill now at his pleasure,
In great shinings and shrouds,
Like one stepping a festival measure,
Through dun rolling of clouds;
Bounded then to the roof, with a crackling
And a hubbub of blows,
That made light of the iron and tackling,
As of pasteboard at shows;
With a riot of roaring, the hissing
Of a myriad snakes,
Claspt the house with a passionate kissing,
Falling off in red flakes;
Ran upstairs wfth his frolicsome paces,
After forms that would flee,
At the doors knocked with ghastly grimaces,
In his devilish glee.

Dead asleep, but by vice's prostration,
He lay heavy and tired,
In the palace, upbuilt by starvation
Of the drudges he hired;
The proud merchant, who ate of the honey
And the fatness of all,
Nor perceived the doom, mocking at money,
Written red on the wall;
The dark hand of the Demon, who scribbled
(Drawing stertorous breath)
Hieroglyphics of ruin, and dribbled
With the droppings of death;
While he snored in his canopied slumber,
And in visions of gold,
With hot fingers kept trying to number
The curst pieces untold;
And yet dreamed not of kindness, nor sorrow
For the tyrannous ill,
And surmised how the gain of the morrow
Would be goodlier still;
Nor once thought of ineffable danger,
Overhanging his brow,
And the judgment, to which he was stranger
At his gate, knocking now.

Then he roused, with a wrench and a shudder
To his perilous fate,
Like a ship shorn of compass and rudder,
With the warning too late;
To hear shrieks, in his agonized waking,
As he started and rose,
Amid roaring of fire, and the shaking
That portended the close;
Then, in panic and trembling, he staggered
To the staircase, and fell
Down the steps up which gaily he swaggered
After feasting so well;
Lay there bleeding and broken, and huddled
On the crater's red brink,
With his brain in the fright no more fuddled
By the vapours of drink;
Face to face with the Demon, who cares not
For big title or purse,
In the march of disaster that spares not
At the crying or curse;
At first silent with dread, and by sifting
Of fierce suffering tost,
And then gathering strength, and uplifting
Wild lament of the lost.

All the servants had fled, not a laggard
Remained helpful behind,

While he grovelled thus hopeless and haggard,
As in coffin confin'd;
If his fancy, in crapulous vision,
Vaster profit yet shaped,
The avenger swooped down with derision,
Though the rats had escaped;
And the crimes he discounted as venial,
Came like ghosts glooming round,
The wrongs heaped upon hireling and menial,
With a menacing sound;
And he knew not a soul in the City,
Through that furnace's fog,
Would take one step to aid him from pity,
And not even a dog;
Evils long he had wrought, from refusing
The just wages, to sin
That was softer, returned with accusing,
Piercing deeply within;
And the child, he had torn from the bosom
Of her mother, to trudge
As an outcast, despoiled of her blossom,
Now arose as his judge

And drew nearer the Fire, with the blasting
Of its passionate breath,
Till it looked like the flame everlasting
Of damnation, not death;
While it blackened and blistered his features,
And the eyeballs turned dim,
With the bites of those serpentine creatures,
All so hungry for him;
And his shouting seemed fainter and sadder,
As of alien grief,
And no glimpse of a heavenly ladder,
Not a ray of relief;
And his labouring lungs now grew stifled,
In the volumes of smoke,
That curled slowly, as if it but trifled
With the terror it woke;
Up it coiled, with ambiguous paces,
That retired as it danced,
In its tardy ascent and embraces,
And yet ever advanced;
Noise outside ebbed away in the distance,
Through the darkness and pain
That waxed fiercer, defying resistance,
And he shouted again.

Who would help him, and hie as a brother
To his pitiful need,
When the fireman hung back, and no other
Had the courage to heed?

Lo, the flame in its fury was master,
That no mortal could chain,
For it leapt with its lightning still faster,
And the water was vain;
And the Demon with bluster and antic,
Set his seal upon all,
In his onset each moment more frantic,
Seizing window and wall;
Planting feet in the brick and the timber,
Gripping glass with the hands
That were lustful and cruel and limber,
And acknowledged no bands;
Howling scoff at the trumpery measures,
That his forces would strike,
And devouring the rubbish and treasures,
In his hunger alike;
Till he waved from the chimneys his banner,
That blazed boody and dire,
And spread out in demoniac manner,
Like a burial pyre.

Was there no one to rescue, no turning
To the swirling and swell
Of that flood, with insatiable burning,
Like an outburst of hell?
Was there none, who could cope with the Giant
In his murderous tread,
Growing grimmer, in ashes defiant,
And bestriding the dead?
Was there none, in that tragical station;
Who the peril would scorn,
With a courage though but desperation,
And a hope if forlorn?
And the hundreds behind them prest forward,
While the leaders shrunk back,
As the breakers on breakers roll shoreward,
And return on their track;
There was swearing of men, and the screaming
Of pale women who blenched,
In the stutter of engines and steaming,
At the furnace they drenched;
Here and there tiny voices shot, thrilling
Through the uproar that rose,
Of young children, who, scared and unwilling,
Waited yet for the close.

All seemed lost, as through smoke in dense masses
Crept a feeble last cry,
And a groan from that medley of classes,
Gave more hopeless reply;
When a figure still girlish and tender,
Like an angel, supreme,

Braved the fire that enswathed her in splendour,
At that moment extreme;
From the multitude stept, without staying
For a farewell or kiss,
And then plunged with her shawl's one arraying,
In that awful abyss;
While the gazers beheld, with a wonder
That escaped not in sound,
The red flames humbly breaking asunder,
And all fawning around;
Yea, preparing a path as for Moses
Once was parted the tide,
Strewing embers that burnt not, like roses
For a new-wedded bride;
But, lo, when through that that fiery portal,
As a maiden to play,
She passed on, a bright Presence not mortal,
Went beside all the way.

Who was she, that herself seemed scarce human,
Though so earthly of frame,
A sweet angel from Heaven, or woman,
That trod fearless the flame?
Who was she, that, so modest in meekness,
As in virginal flower,
Matched the dew of her delicate weakness,
With that horrible Power?
Who was she, that, with never a turning,
Thus adventured her life,
Moved unscathed through the blasting and burning,
Of the Demon's red strife?
But the child he in sport had sore cheated,
For a season of lust,
Then deserted and damnably treated,
Kicked below to the dust;
Though deceived and betrayed and discarded,
When his pleasure was cloyed,
She alone now with love him regarded,
Who her fame had destroyed;
She alone, in that beautiful fashion,
If her reason was dim,
From the infinite depths of compassion,
Still felt yearnings for him.

On her brow not a brand dared to kindle,
In its fury and wrath,
And the heat seemed to droop and to dwindle,
At her confident path;
Oh, the fire looked all baffled and blighted,
Fettered as by a band,
Like a dog that is beaten and frighted,
And came licking her hand;

Formed a ceiling for her to pass under,
Like a conqueror's arch,
Sank to whispers the roar of its thunder,
And illumined her march;
Dropt the head, that rose haughty and pressing
On the ruin it made,
With a slavish and abject caressing,
As if Some One forbade;
Stopped the footsteps, that ramping and rushing
Shattered stonework and wood,
Like a child, which its mother is hushing,
That essays to be good;
Into crevice and corner slunk hiding,
Before faith's unsaid plea,
And kept ever more lowly subsiding,
In an ebbing Red Sea.

Till she came, where in anguish and humbling
Her seducer yet lay,
Without staying one moment or stumbling,
On her glorious way;
Through the flames, that so lately imperious
Swallowed all in their pride,
With the might of that Presence mysterious,
Walking on by her side;
While she then, with a force not of maiden,
Raised the cripple, and bore
On the breast he with sorrow had laden,
Like a shipwreck to shore;
Just in time from the ill-fated mansion,
To flee judgment on sin,
Ere the pile in its pompous expansion,
Shrivelled up and fell in;
Just to live and escape the dread sentence,
That was dark'ning the stair,
To be led by his God to repentance,
And the evil repair;
Just to make her his wife, and confessing
All his vileness and harms,
While receiving her love's last caressing,
Die absolved in her arms.

University of Virginia Library

BAPTIZED BY FIRE.