University of Virginia Library

. . . 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!