Women must weep :: :: University of Virginia Library

O she was a maiden coy,
And she was a being bright;
For her days were a dancing stream of joy,
And the earth was only a painted toy,
Or a showman's fairy sight,
In the rich and radiant light

Of the love that nothing yet could cloy,
And the peace no passion might alloy.
The world to fight,
And truth employ,
She arose in her young unconquered might
That would death itself destroy.

But there stretch'd across her track,
The all-beautiful Golden Gate,
That invites the unwary souls who lack
To the feast from which they come not back,
And the pageant of proud state
Which ends in the evil fate—
To the sun-bright scenes that will change to black,
And the blooms that conceal the earthquake's crack,—
Lone and late,
Blind, in the wrack
Of the rolling mists and the forms of hate,
She drew to the foes' attack.

And she deem'd they were kindly friends,
In her yet uncheated trust;
For she had not a thought of baser ends,
As she came with the innocence that bends,
When the delicate blossom must,
To the wooing pleasant gust—
Though she walk'd as an ignorant victim wends
To the doom that the angel-demon sends,
Crownèd lust,
The rock that rends,
As a thing of earth to its mortal dust,
Where the damnèd soul desends.

With her foolish wayward will,
She stood at the open door,
And she heard the song of the laughing rill,
And she felt a strange delicious thrill
That she never felt before,
When she mark'd the goodly store,

And the gifts of the gracious wealth or skill,
But she knew not these were the gifts that kill.
One step more,
One step still,
And she plunged in the sea without a shore,
In the grave no corpses fill.