Women must weep :: :: University of Virginia Library

Aghast in the crowd,
Adrift with the snow,
By the weight of her weary sorrow bow'd,
That was dark and deep as the thunder-cloud,
With the footsteps slow,
And her forehead low,
She was yet all deaf to the babbling loud,
She was yet all blind to the festive glow,
Poor and proud,
Wrapt in woe,
Like a woman draped in her funeral shroud,
Who is stabb'd to the heart with a mortal blow.

Away from her home,
Afar from her kin,
She had wander'd about from tower to dome,
In the mocking gleam and the murky gloam,
With her mantle thin
Tuck'd tight to her chin,

While the snow-flakes fell like the whirling foam;
She had turn'd the last page and it would not win,
Shut the tome,
Shelved it in,
As her staggering feet now scarce could roam,
All alone in the multitude with her sin.

Apart from the mass,
With nothing to pawn,
She had seen how the heavy shadows pass,
She had watch'd for the glimmer on the glass—
Like a frighten'd fawn,
From its mountain lawn,
In the staring street, with the grimy gas,
Like a desert that but with stones is strewn—
One more lass
Downward drawn,
In the sullen warfare of class with class,
To the dreadful night that can have no dawn.

Astray in the town,
And nobody's pet,
With a horrible shame that no gin might drown,
And a burden more than an empire's crown,
For the judgment set,
With the fears that fret,
As the moth lays hold of the crumbling gown,
She was drifting still from the gibes she met,
Deeper down,
Farther yet,
Till the darkness closed like a dead man's frown,
On her hair all draggled—her wild eyes wet.