University of Virginia Library

With outstretched hands he fain would raise
That prostrate form; but, no!
From his polluting touch she shrinks,
As from her deadliest foe,
Springs to her feet, and stands erect.
Nay, in the moon's pale beam,
Her figure, rigid with her scorn,
Doth more than mortal seem;
Her glaring eyes fixed full on his,
Her face unearthly pale,
Seduction's victim, in his ears
Thus thunders forth her tale.

THE LOST ONE'S TALE.

“Thou! can it be, or do my cheated eyes
Behold some mocking fiend in human guise?
No, 'tis himself—the tempter—it is he!
The author of my shame, my misery;
By whose false vows and perjured oaths I fell
From virtue's height to vice's lowest hell;
To whom my heart, my soul, my all was given;
By whom to sin's abyss I have been driven;
Who from a trusting girl her virtue stole,
And, not content with that, must damn the soul;
Who, pander like, made over to his friend
The being whom he promised to defend,
Treated his victim like a beast of price,
And made a market of his very vice.
Coward and villain! Could my state impart
No touch of pity to thy stony heart?
E'en though thou wert incapable of love,
Could not humanity thy conscience move?
Did not my unborn infant mutely plead
For mercy to its mother in her need?
Ah! do my words excite thy noble bile?
Small care have I for either frown or smile.
Wretch! demon! fiend! thou shalt not pass till I
Have dinned the sequel of thy villainy
Into those ears. Alas! full well I know
That, past that sense, words will not, cannot go.
But to my tale. When, craven like, you fled,
I felt within my heart a secret dread;
For a pure nature, once deceived, assumes
Suspicion as an armour, and becomes
Doubly suspicious. Oh, that dreadful night!
How thankful was I when the morning light
Cleared multiplying horrors from my brain,
And gave my soul the power to hope again.
The day dragged on; your friend arrived, and then
I learned, with wonder, what mean things are men;
Found that you nobly had arranged to sell
Her whose sole fault was loving you too well.
But he to whom you basely made me o'er,
When he had heard my short sad story, swore
That he would rather die than stoop to be
A partner in such monstrous villainy.
He was a man, and one in whose warm heart
Vice was not linked with treachery and art:
His vices on his soul but lightly sat;
Yours are your own, deep-rooted and innate;
You, by your flight, outraged each human tie,
He showed your victim every sympathy.
By his advice (may heaven reward his care!
And acts like his, I feel, are treasured there)
I sought my home, I dared to turn my face
Towards him on whose grey hairs I'd brought disgrace—
My outraged father. Like a guilty thing
I waited, till the night, with friendly wing,
Shrouded my features in its close disguise,
And hid my altered form from prying eyes.
A cold and chilling mist, a driving rain
Beat on my fevered brow, but beat in vain:
I struggled on, uncertain, weary, worn,
My soul a prey to doubt, my bosom torn
By keenest anguish, while my wavering mind
Now towards hope, and now to fear inclined.
Wearied, at length I reached the well-known gate;
The place to me seemed strangely desolate;
No cheering light from latticed window shone;
I strove to catch a sound—alas! no tone
Of long familiar voices met my ear;
I felt a wild, strange, melancholy fear
Creep o'er me; while the damp and murky air,
And death-like silence drove me to despair.
At length, more bold, within the porch I stand,
And seek admission with a faltering hand.
But no reply—no signs of life appear;
My beating heart the only sound I hear.
Frantic, at last, with all my strength I try
To attract some notice: in my agony
I kneel upon the wet and reeking sod,
And dare, in prayer, address my outraged God;
My faltering orison yields no relief;
Doubt adds its terrors to my bitter grief.
Now round the farm I steal, and try to find
Some sign to reassure my troubled mind:
Fruitless my search—in stable, barn, or stall;
I visit each, but they are vacant all.
In hopeless agony I turn from thence,
A prey to all the horrors of suspense,
Retrace my footsteps, and, with o'ercharged breast,
Enter the village, hushed in midnight rest;
Steal past each well-known porch with guilty fear,
Longing to know the truth I dread to hear.
Beyond the village, in a crazy shed,
Lives a lone woman, whom her neighbours dread:
At midnight hour, beneath the moon's pale shade,
She culls the herbs which aid her baneful trade;
With hellish art compounds decoctions foul
(Poisons at once to body and to soul).
At her approach the children cease to play,
And e'en the rustic matrons steal away;
Fearing her withering curse, the tired boor
Quickens his sauntering pace when near her door.
Through her dull casement a faint, glimmering light
Falls like a ray of hope upon my sight;
My fears are conquered, desperate I turn
To her shunned porch, the dreaded truth to learn:
I knock, and soon the hag, with accent sour,
Demands my purpose at so late an hour;
My name once heard, she opes her creaking door,
And with quick eye my wasted face scans o'er;
Then, taught mistrust by age, peers in my eyes,
And mutters words of wonder and surprise;
First bids me enter, in a sullen tone,
Then cautiously secures her dwelling lone:
Half dead with fear, a chair receives my frame;
The crone meanwhile mouths o'er and o'er my name,
As if the memory's maze, not all effaced,
Required some clue by which it might be traced.
Some minutes then she rocks her palsied head,
My eyes the while survey the ruined shed.
Herbs, once so green, now dried and withering lie,
A fitting type of my sad destiny;
Upon the hearth a low and smouldering flame,
That gave nor light, nor heat, yet served to tame
The raw, inclement air. A huge black cat
Rubbed round the chair in which its mistress sat,
Its large green eyes glared on me as it moved,
Acting as sentry to the thing it loved.
Scarce had I time these various signs to note,
Ere words broke harshly from the witch's throat.
‘Ah, dainty one,’ she cried; ‘you here! Yon boy
Was like them all, soon tired of his toy.
Ah, well! ah, well! I mind you ever were
Different to all the sullen brutes down here;
Your word was ever gentle, and I could,
On your farm, gather sticks and rotten wood
Without a curse, or else a snarling cur
Let loose to force the devilish hag to stir.
Ah, well! I'm grateful: now I never hear
Aught but the muttered words of hate and fear.
Your poor old father—’ At that name I fell;
In those few words I heard a parent's knell;
The cottage swam before my dizzy brain,
Long I lay senseless, till, recalled again
By that lone woman's care, tearless I stood,
And heard the fruits of my ingratitude.
My father, from the hour of my flight,
Ne'er looked, with conscious eye, on Heaven's light;
Speechless and crippled, for some time he lay,
His farm, the meanwhile, falling to decay;
Till a harsh agent, and the law's fell fang,
Finished the ruin which his child began.
The parish-poorhouse gave its grudging care
To him whose generous heart would ever share
His meal with misery's child; not long was he
An inmate of that home of poverty;
That power who willed that he should not repine
At my disgrace, or view his own decline,
Freed his imprisoned soul from mortal clay,
To again expand in heaven's unclounded day.
Judge of my horror when I found that I
Had added murder to my infamy;
I used nor steel, nor drug, nor leaden ball,
But a more fatal engine than them all,
A child's ingratitude, that weapon sure
To pierce a parent's bosom to the core.
That fearful night passed like some hideous dream;
I left the spot with morning's faintest gleam;
The hag in vain spoke of the untimely hour;
Whispered of certain drugs that have the power
To outrage nature in her closest ties,
And hide my open shame from prying eyes;
Shuddering with horror, from this nest of sin
I flee—yet ere my wanderings begin,
I seek the still churchyard, and try to trace,
By the grey light, my father's resting place.
That duty paid, my faltering steps I bend
To that huge town whose vastness knows no end:
The meanest lodging in its meanest street,
Yet good enough for misery's retreat,
Was mine;—here, in due course of time, I pressed
My ill-starred infant to my throbbing breast,
In its embrace felt something like relief
From my past suffering and gnawing grief;
Yet did its sex foreboding thoughts employ;
I should have felt less anxious with a boy;
Dear bought experience made me shudder, when
I thought on all the wiles and snares of men.
But soon my fears assumed another form;
Another subject filled me with alarm;
My funds, which, guarded with a miser's care,
Had served to keep me on a miser's fare,
Were almost gone; yet did I not repine;
One blessing still remained while health was mine;
And I could work, and trusted to obtain
Something by which I might a pittance gain:
A willing mind, I had been taught to think,
Could not to downright want untimely sink.
Ah, cruel error! bitter, taunting lie!
A seeming truth—a hollow fallacy!
How oft, elate with hope, I left my home?
How oft returned, with ill success o'ercome?
What weary miles? what hours in waiting passed;
But to be brutally refused at last;
Or, if not that, offered so small a price,
That e'en the very fiend of avarice
Had blushed to name it; yet these vampires found
Their sordid offers on substantial ground.
They have, lynx-eyed, discovered, what might pass
Less greedy mortals,—that the lowest class
Are not the poorest—that the poor require,
As labour's wage, bread, shelter, clothes, and fire.
They see that there are thousands whose small gains
Form, on the whole, a sum which ill maintains
Those signs external, which, in worldly cant,
Are termed appearances, and which to want
Is sheer starvation. Many a female plies
Her constant needle, dims her sparkling eyes,
Her task, fools deem, to pass the time away;
Nonsense! she works, like all the world, for pay,
But living, as she does, at others' charge,
She can, in this way, her mean wage enlarge;
Saps her young life to make a false parade;
Nor let the world suspect she is half paid.
Thus does a fiendish selfishness contrive
On others' misery to gaily live;
And thus the very poorest of the poor
Lay half their earnings at the rich man's door.
Day after day I try, without success,
To find employment. Oh, the bitterness
Of that sad search! to see the living tide
Press onward, all intent and occupied;
To feel the will, the wish to fill a place,
However small, in labour's busy race,
And meet, at each attempt, a fresh rebuff,
Tries a soul formed of nature's sternest stuff.
One day, when near the end of my dull round,
A written notice caused my heart to bound:
Labour was wanted, it was work that I
Had practised almost from my infancy;
The finest cambric served not to suffice
The wants of luxury; to enhance its price,
The embroiderer's skill was needed; I applied,
This time my meek request was not denied,
Nay, was accepted; and my wondrous pay,
By hardest work procured, twelvepence a day;
Twelve hours' constant labour, but no food;
Hot water, it is true, they did include;
Yet even this was heaven, when I thought
That what my child required might be bought.
Poor love! she never knew her natural food,
Grief had dried up the source from whence it flowed;
And day by day I saw, with pain and fright,
Her cheeks grow thinner and her eyes less bright;
I sought advice, my darling in my arms,
I feared to hear confirmed my soul's alarms,
For all my soul was centred in my child;
Oh, what was life to me of her despoiled!
Behold me now at the physician's door,
With my last piece of gold, my only store;
In turn am called, and, with an anxious heart,
My fears and my necessities impart.
He was a mild, kind, venerable man,
Who patient heard me, ere himself began:
He told me that my child requirèd more
Good food than physic; that the blood was poor;
She needed nourishment and wholesome air,
Which, with good nursing, would her health repair.
I promised what he ordered should be tried,
And humbly offered all my purse supplied;
Sadly he smiled, gave back the coin again,
Traced a few words with quick and ready pen;
Handed me kindly what appeared to be,
To my unpractised eyes, a recipe;
Pressed my cold, trembling hand within his own;
Charged me to come again in courteous tone;
And bade me hasten to a shop where he
Knew that the drugs were what they ought to be.
I found the house, proffered the paper straight,
And for the medicine sat me down to wait;
When, to my great amazement, gracious heaven!
Five golden pieces were politely given.
I sought for explanation, and was told
The paper did not order drugs, but gold.
How did my heart with gratitude o'erflow;
A rock of refuge in my sea of woe,
A friend was found to whom I could apply;
I felt my heart expand; sweet sympathy
Shed its warm lustre o'er my prospect drear,
Illumed my faint-sketched hope, and banished fear.
Again I saw the welcome bloom of health
In that sweet face which formed my only wealth;
And, in that sight, almost forgot my pain;
Nay, dared to dream of happiness again.
Too soon, be sure, does hateful want return
To one whose efforts such a trifle earn.
Again my loved one's roses fade from view,
Again I see privation's sickly hue;
Want, baffled once, returns with doubled force;
My wretched fortunes fall from bad to worse.
That pittance small now fails me in my need;
Employment ceases, I am poor indeed!
A month drags on; each day that angel frail
Becomes more thin, more dazzlingly pale;
Her eyes acquire that steadfast, meaning gaze,
That look which should have come with length of days.
I sought that good, kind man, whose name I loved,
But he to brighter spheres had been removed.
What did I then? you ask—I turned to thee!
You may conceive my abject misery,
When I could stoop so low as to demand
Aught like a favour at thy perjured hand:
But, oh! to watch my infant's gasping breath,
Her wasted cheeks—inevitable death!
To know the author of her being could
Prevent her perishing from want of food,
Did I but seek him, as I felt I ought,
Nor let her perish by my pride; the thought
Subdued me quite; the mother, in my soul,
Drove out all feelings else, and claimed the whole.
I flew to find you, but misfortune still
Dogged every step with unrelenting will.
You were abroad, they said; I turned aside,
Mute with despair, and bankrupt of my pride.
'Twas a raw, gusty night, the chilling wind,
Like the cold world, was cutting and unkind.
My vitals felt sharp hunger's gnawing fang—
A dead, dull, sickening pain, not the swift pang
That, in sheer mercy to the sufferer, kills
All sense of life and its attendant ills:
Nor bread, nor fire, nor light beneath my roof,
Goaded by stinging memory's reproof,
A moral drunkenness o'erwhelmed my mind,
Reckless I wandered, to reflection blind;
Temptation whispered, backed by hunger's voice—
Disgrace or death were offered to my choice.
I struggled, faltered, and, in fine, became
That which my tongue e'en now denies to name.
I fell: let those who would condemn me try
In such a strife to gain the mastery.
Let constant hunger's goading, empty pain
Send up its dark suggestions to the brain.
Look but abroad: each passing figure seems
Fair fortune's child, to envy's sickly dreams;
Add to all this the thought that you possess
No friend to aid you in your dire distress;
That all the troubles under which you smart
Arose from owning a too feeling heart;
That you are starving, hopeless, and despised,
While flaunting vice is flattered, pampered, prized;
Crown the dark picture with a starving child,
And the world's censure must, methinks, be mild.
I fell: yet did I most myself abhor—
Shame, horror, anguish, my sad bosom tore.
I owned a treasure I did not suspect;
I felt its loss—the loss of self-respect.
Till now, whate'er the heartless world might deem,
I paused upon the brink of vice's stream;
Now all opinion I had dared to brave,
By boldly launching on its filthy wave.
Stung by remorse's voice, I vainly try
To drown its tones in inebriety;
Laugh, with a loud and would-be joyous tone,
At things which once had turned me into stone.
That frightful life! A constant acted lie—
Death in the heart and laughter in the eye;
False tears, false smiles—but words are all too faint;
No tongue can aptly tell, no pen can paint
That fallen state, its mad, its feverish joys—
The fruit of drink, which, day by day, destroys
Sense, feeling, conscience, triumphs o'er the will,
And renders hideous vice more hideous still.
Its waking horrors—stinging, sharp remorse—
Again forgotten in guilt's giddy course:
Those scenes, where oft the borrowed colour pales
Beside the crimson which the cheek assails;
This and much more have I endured; and why?
My guilty conscience whispers a reply.
I dared to have a secret, dared conceal
That which my duty bound me to reveal;
Strong in my own conceit, I set at nought
Those laws which woman's instinct might have taught;
Descended to be partner in a cheat,
And fell—a victim to my own deceit.
Oh! that the young and thoughtless could but know
How one false step may plunge them into woe;
That one departure from truth's open plain
Brings falsehood's spurious offspring in its train;
That none can caution, guide, instruct, reprove,
Like those whom God and nature bid us love.
But little more remains; the oft-told tale
Has the same end—the lazar house, the jail!
The last I never knew; the first has been
My late sad refuge in this fitful scene.
What of my child? False villain! would'st pretend
At this dread hour to be my infant's friend?
Dost deem me still so blind as not to see
That thou hast been my deadliest enemy?
Dost think that I would let that angel fair
Owe aught to thee, or risk thy devilish care?
Never! Let gaping worldlings blame the deed;
These hands from life and sin my darling freed.
When late thy words broke on my startled ear,
For her pure soul I breathed my latest prayer.
Canst understand? My child—thy child is—dead!
Yon tranquil wave flows o'er her gentle head;
Sinless she sleeps; nor can she ever know
Her mother's scarlet shame, her mother's woe.
Murderess! E'en so. My child, I come! I come
To share thy peace and join thee in thy tomb.”