Women must weep :: :: University of Virginia Library

She yearns beside the yawning bar,
Beside the gulf that stretches far,
For pastures glad and green,
And light that kindles not in star,
Where it has ever been,
By the pure spirit seen;
She fain would hide the guilty scar,
Where arrow grim and keen
Struck down the woman it would mar,
Who left her harbour screen,
And floated out upon a flimsy spar;
But darkness rolls between.

For, oh, she cannot see a ray
Of the old dear rejoicing day,
When every hour would glide
In glory, which about her lay,
Into the same sweet tide
Of promise and of pride;
She will not weep, she dares not pray,
Before that chasm so wide,
Where dreadful forms her footstep stay—
And none but they abide—
Which stride across the one forbidden way,
And her from hope divide.

105

She chose her home, as hapless Lot,
Who in the splendour mark'd no spot,
She made that bitter bed,
And spurn'd the hidden humble plot,
Which but a shadow shed,
Nor fond ambition fed;
And now for blessings which are not,
On paths where madness led,
She craves again the narrow cot,
And lowly gifts that sped;
But every face, as if they all forgot,
Save the abyss, has fled.

Ah, now she cannot change at will,
By any scheme of human skill,
Her sunless Sodom plains,
For the familiar laughing rill
And pretty primrose lanes,
With creaking harvest wains;
Though pale and pinch'd a woman still,
With hand that blindly strains
Into the night, which bodes but ill,
Nor washes off the stains;
She mourns for rest, as Moses from his hill;
But the great gulf remains.