The Poetical Works of John Payne :: :: University of Virginia Library

JUST a drowned woman, with death-draggled hair
And wan eyes, all a-stare;
The weary limbs composed in ghastly rest,
The hands together prest,
Tight holding something that the flood has spared
Nor even the rough workhouse folk have dared
To separate from her wholly, but untied
Gently the knotted hands and laid it by her side.

A piteous sight,—yet not without some sign
Of handiwork divine;
Some faint, mysterious traces of content
About the brows, unbent
At last from toil and misery,— some mark
Of child-like, tired composure in the stark,
Wan features, on whose calm there is imprest
At last the seal of rest.

See, she was fair,—and now she's rid of strife,
She's comelier than in life;
For death has smoothed the tresses of her hair
And stroked the lines of care,
With no ungentle hand, from off her brow.
She seems at peace at last,—no matter how.
Death has been angel-sweet to her tired soul;
She has no need of dole.

You know her story? Just the sad, old tale,
Whose victims never fail!
Common enough and mean, but yet not quite
Without its gleam of light;
Not all devoid of some redeeming spark
Of nobleness to lighten its grim dark.
You turn away. You've heard of many such?
“She was so wicked!” But she loved so much.

I tell you, this poor woman you despise,
From whom you turn your eyes,
Loved with an ardour, side by side with which
Our lives, so seeming rich
In virtues and in grandeurs, fade away
Into the dusk, as night before the day.
Yet of her life you fear to hear me tell.
“She was so wicked!” But she loved so well.

You saw the portrait taken from her grasp,
Stiffened in Death's cold clasp?
Two little children, poorly clad and plain,
Sun-scorched and worn with pain,
Wan with mean cares, too early for their years,
Their child-eyes eager with unchildish fears
And sordid, bitter yearnings. “But a smutch!”
You say. “And after all it's nought to me
What was her life and what her hopes might be.
She was so wicked!” Oh, she loved so much!

True, a mere daub, whereon the beneficent sun
Has written, in faint, dun,
Unbeauteous lines, a hard and narrow life,
Wherein dull care was rife
And little thought of beauty or delight
Relieved the level blackness of the night:
And yet I would not change those pictured two
For all the cherubs Raphael ever drew.

Two little faces, plain enough to you,
Nothing of bright or new;
Such faces as one meets amongst each crowd,
Sharp-visaged and low-browed;
And yet to her, her picture-books of heaven,
The treasuries from which the scanty leaven,
Wherewith she stirred her poor mean life to joy,
Was drawn,—pure gold for her without alloy.

They were her all, and by no sacred tie,
No pure maternity.
To her the name of wife had been denied;
In sin she lived and died.
She was an outlaw from the pale of right
And yet there was that in her had such might,
That she would not have shamed our dear Lord Christ.
She loved and that sufficed.

They were her shame and pride, her hope and fear,
To her how dreadly dear
We scarce can feel. You happy, virtuous wives,
Whose quiet, peaceful lives
Flow on, unstirred by misery or crime,
Can have no thought how high these souls can climb
For love; with what a weird, unearthly flame
These wretched mothers love their babes of shame;
How they can suffer for them, dull and mean
As they may seem, and sell their souls to screen
Their darlings, dealing out their hearts' best blood,
Drop after drop, to buy them daily food.

And so for years she toiled for them, as none
Could ever toil, save one
Who had nought else to care for, night and day,
Until her hair grew gray
With labour such as souls in Dante's hell
Might have been bound to, and with fiends as fell
To act as her taskmasters and compel
The poor, thin fingers;—yet was honest still
For many a weary day and night, until
She found, with aching heart and pain-crazed head,
Her toil could not suffice to earn her children bread.

They were her all; and she, ground down by want,
With hollow eyes and gaunt,
Saw but their misery, small beside her own,
Heard but their hungry moan,
Could not endure their piteous looks and sold
Herself to infamy, to warm their cold,
To feed their hunger and assuage their thirst,
Not hers. And yet, folk say, she is accurst!

Cruel as fate was, there was yet in store
More pain for her and more
Fierce anguish. Famine and the plague combined,

In league with her own kind,
To steal from her her one source of content,
The one faint gleam of higher things, that blent
Its glimmer with her life's unbroken grey;
The one pale star, that turned her night to day,
Sank in the chill of death's delivering wave,
Extinguished in the grave.

Not even the omnipotence of Love
Had power to rise above
The sullen stern unpitying sweep of Fate,
That left her desolate.
O wretched mother! Wretched time of ours!
When all enlightenment's much-vaunted powers
To save this Magdalen's all could only fail,
When Love has no avail!

Starved even to death! For this she'd sold her soul;
This was her striving's goal!
Life had no longer aught that might suffice
To hallow all its dreary want and vice.
Nothing but death remained to her, the crown
Of all whose lives are hopeless. So fell down
Her star of life into the dusk of night
And she gave up the fight.

So calm and peaceful seemed the dark grey flood,
Foul with much human blood.
God help her! Death was kinder than the world.
The sullen waters whirled
A moment o'er a circling plash, and then
She was forgotten from the world of men
And it was nought to her what folk might say.
Quiet at last she lay.

I know not if this poor soul's martyrdom
For you be wholly dumb.

To me, I own, her sin seems holier far
Than half our virtues are;
For hers was of that ore which, purged of dross,
Yields gold that might have gilded Christ's own cross
And He have smiled. And yet you fear her touch?
“She was so wicked!” But she loved so much.

And of her common, mean and awful fate
Our righteous ones will prate,—
A fruitful text for homily!—until
Another come to fill
Her vacant place. And yet none sees the bloom
Of love, that opened in her life's blank gloom
And made it angel-bright. Folk turn aside
And know not how a martyr lived and died.

“Accurséd,” say they, “is the suicide.
In sin she lived and died.
We have in her, and she in us, no part.
Our lives, thank heaven! dispart.
At least we're holier than she.” Alas!
My brethren, when reflected in God's glass,
I doubt me much if many of our lives
Will, when the day of reckoning arrives,
Or all our virtues, with her sin compare
Or as her life be fair.

Even grim Death was pitiful to her;
Her rest he did not stir.
Shall we be, who with her drew common breath,
Less pitiful than Death?
We, who have heard how Christ once lived and died,
With whom His love is fabled to abide,
Shall we avoid a poor dead sinner's touch?
So wicked, say we? Oh, she loved so much!

For me, I cannot hold her life's long pain
To have been all in vain.
I cannot think that God will let her go,
After this life of woe;
Cannot believe that He, whose deathless love
She aped so well, will look on from above
With careless righteousness, while she sinks down
Into hell's depths, and with a pious frown,
Leave her to struggle in the devil's clutch.
True, she was wicked;—but she loved so much.

At an inquest held at the Whitehorse Tavern, before Mr. Cooper, Coroner for the Western district, on the body of Eliza Farrell, unfortunate female, found drowned below Waterloo Bridge on Monday last, Rosse Farrell said, “Deceased was my sister. She was an unfortunate. She was unmarried. She had worked as a seamstress till trade was so bad last year that she could not earn a living at the prices paid by the sweaters and she then went upon the streets.” Witness believed she would never have done so but for her two illegitimate children, of whom she was passionately fond. Witness had no doubt that deceased's mind had been affected by their death. They died of neglect and starvation, owing to a woman, whom deceased paid to take care of them, having spent the money in drink. She paid the woman every penny she could scrape together and witness had known her sell the dress off her back to make up the weekly money. Deceased came to her on Saturday night, after having been to see the children, and told her she had found they were dead and had been already buried by the parish. She seemed quite distracted and rushed out of the house like a mad thing and witness had never seen her again. The photograph produced (found on deceased) was that of the children. After a few remarks from the coroner, the jury returned a verdict of “Suicide in a state of temporary insanity.” —Extract from daily paper.