Lyrical Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

With the cottage girls and the poor
It often is so, they say:
Yet 'tis to each mother as much
As if she were the only such
Whose daughter has wander'd astray.

She troubled and pain'd me oft;
Yet I loved her beyond them all,
Fanciful ever and wild,
My dark-eyed gipsy child,
Dark-hair'd and nut-brown and tall.

They say she loved notice and dress;
There was nothing to make me amazed:

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Perhaps it was vanity there;
For her looks an overcare,
An overcare to be praised.

Yet no such sweet temper as her's,
No smiles like her's in the place;
When she garnish'd the cottage out,
Or carried the youngest about,
And she with her mere child's face!

And I guarded her all I could;
But what can be done by the poor?
She went from her home far away,
Where respite was none, night or day,
Nor comfort within the door.

Yet if she had had her chance,
She would have been gentle and good;
Have kept a pure maiden breast,
By respect for herself repress'd
The dance of the youthful blood.

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But praise, on her simple looks,
And gold, on her wearisome life
Where never a happiness came,
Like sunbeams fell:—and the shame
Was hid in some whisper of ‘wife.’

I know not if she believed,
For she was only a child;
She took his base jewels for true;
She could not keep out of his view,
And turn'd unsettled and wild.

And jest and lust and the pride
Of conquest urged on the suit;
Half force, half folly:—but O
The shame of advantage, so
Won on a child by a brute!

And he had his play and his laugh,
And pass'd on to his pleasures elsewhere:
But she—where she hides her head,

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And if with the living or dead,
To think I cannot dare.

She dares not come back, nor knows
For her face how I linger and yearn:—
Whatever there be, I forgive,—
O one hour, to tell if you live,
Only one hour, return!

—If ever the child has her chance
She may yet be honest and good.
God will pity the lost, and exact
From the tempter the price of his act;
For upon his head is her blood.