University of Virginia Library

III. ‘Annie;’ or, the Waif's Jubilee.

‘Annie! Annie!’
Hark, it is Father's call!
See, he is coming! Run
To meet him, little one,
In the golden evenfall.
Yonder down the lane
His voice calls clear:
‘Annie!’ he cries again—
Run down and meet him, dear!
The long day's toil is done,
The hour of rest has come—
Haste to him, little one—
Ride on his shoulder home!
. . . What voice is it she hears across the storm,
The haggard Waif who stands with drip ping form
Shivering beneath the lamps of the dark street?
With slant moist beams upon the Rain's black walls
The dreary gaslight falls,
And all around the wings o' the Tempest beat!
O hark! O hark!
The voice calls clear i' the dark—
She hears—she moans—and moaning wanders on;
A mist before her eyes,
A stone in her heart, she flies
Into the rainy darkness, and is gone!
What a Night! strong and blind
Down the street swoops the Wind,
Falls breathless, then moans!
While again and again
Like a spirit in pain,
On the black slippery stones
Sobs the Rain! . . .
‘Annie! Annie!’
Hark, it is Father's call!
See, he is coming! Run
To meet him, little one,
In the golden evenfall!
. . . Out from the darkness she hath crept once more,
That strange voice ringing hollow over all;
Close to the theatre's great lighted door,
Where smiling ladies, while the raindrops pour,
Wait for their carriages, and linkmen bawl.
She pauses watching, while they laugh and pass
Tripping across the pavement 'neath the gas,
Then rattling home. Home? Ah, what home hath she,
Who once was bright and glad as any there?
Fifty years old, this is her Jubilee!
And round her Life is like an angry Sea
Breaking to ululations of despair!
. . . Who hath not seen her, on dark nights of rain,
Or when the Moon is chill on the chill street,
Creeping from shade to shade in grief and pain,
Showing her painted cheeks for man's disdain
And wrapt in woe as in a winding sheet?
Sin hath so stain'd it none may recognise
The face that once was innocent and fair,
And hollow rings are round the hungry eyes,
And shocks of grey replace the golden hair;
And all her chance is, when the drink makes blind
The foulest and the meanest of mankind,
To hide her stains and force a hideous mirth,
And gain her body's food the old foul way—
Ah, loathsome dead sea fruit that eats like earth,
Her mouth is foul with it both night and day!
So that corruption and the stench of Death
Consume her body and pollute her breath,
And all the world she looks upon appears
A dismal charnel-house of lust and tears!
Sick of the horror that corrupts the flesh,
Tangled in vice as in a spider's mesh,
Scenting the lazar-house, in soul's despair,
She sees the gin shop's bloodshot eyeballs glare,
And creepeth in, the feverish drug to drain
That blots the sense and blinds the aching brain;
And then with feeble form and faltering feet
Again she steals into the midnight street,
Seeks for her prey, and woefully takes flight
To join her spectral sisters of the Night!
What a Night! fierce and blind
Down the street swoops the Wind!
How it moans! how it groans!
While again and again
Like a spirit in pain,
On the black slippery stones
Sobs the Rain!
See! like ghosts to and fro
Living forms swiftly pass,
With their shadows below
In the gleam of the gas;
And the swells, wrapt up warm,
With their weeds blasing bright,
Hurry home thro' the Storm . . .
It's a Hell of a Night!
Hell? She is in it, and these shapes she sees,
While crawling on, are hateful and accurst!
Light laughter of light lips, mad images
Of dainty creatures delicately nurst,
Cries of the revel, blackness, and the gleam
Of ghastly lights, are blended in her dream
Of Hell that lives and is, the Hell she knows,
With all its mockery of human woes!
Darkly, as in a glass, she seëth plain
The vision of dead days that live again:
The house, beyond these streets, where she was born;
The father's face in death; the hungry home;
The fight for bread; the hungry and forlorn
Cry for a help and guide that would not come;
The glimmer of glad halls, the forms therein
Beck'ning and laughing till she joined their mirth;
Then, pleasures sultry with the sense of sin,
And those foul dead sea fruits that taste of earth;
Then, blackness of disease and utter shame,
And all Hell's infamies without a name!
Then, all the bloom of sense and spirit fled,
The slow descent to midnight gulfs of dread
Like this she sees!—Then, in a wretched room
Deep 'mid the City's sunless heart of gloom,
Another life awakening 'neath her heart,
A sickly babe with crying lips apart
Moaning for food!—and into Hell she creeps
Once more to feed it, haunting the black street,—
Yea, in the garret where her infant sleeps
Hell's hideous rites are done, that it may eat!
Then, Death once more! The sickly life at rest;
The child's light coffin that a child might bear;
The mother's hunger tearing at her breast,
And only Drink to drown the soul's despair.
She sees it all, on this her Jubilee,
While the Night moans and the sick
Hell-lights gleam. . . .
O God! O Motherhood! Can these things be,
And men still say that Hell is but a dream?
‘Annie! Annie!’
What voice is this that cries
Amid the lights of Hell,
Where these live shadows dwell
Under the rain-rent skies? . . .
What a night! All one hears
Is the torrent of tears
On a world plung'd in pain;
All one sees is the swarm
Of dim waifs in the storm,
Flitting hither and thither
(O God, who knows whi ker?)
Like ghosts, thro' the Rain!
. . . Annie! . . .
She hears the voice, ev'n while she crawls
'Neath the black arches on the riverside,
Then moaning low upon her face she falls . . .
Annie! . . . She stirs, and listens as it calls,
With eyes that open wide.
Lost there to Man, dead to the Storm and Strife.
She lies and keeps her Jubilee till morn,
O'er her, a heap of rags, the waves of Life
Wash weary and forlorn . . .
Is all, then, done? Nay, from the depths of Night
That voice still cries, and dimly gleams a Light . . .
‘Annie!’—She listens —Thro' the Tempest wild
One cometh softly—she can see him come!—
‘Father! I'm Annie! I'm your little child!’
And father lifts her up, to bear her Home!

L'Envoi to the Preceding Poem.