The Poetical Works of Walter C. Smith :: :: University of Virginia Library

What are you whispering there,
Parleying with sin at the door?
I have no blessing for her;
She is dead to me evermore;
Dead! would to God that she were!

Dead! and the grass o'er her head!
There is no shame in dying:
They were wholesome tears we shed
Where all her wee sisters are lying;
And the love of them is not dead.

I did not curse her, did I?
I meant not that, O Lord:
We are cursed enough already;
Let her go with never a word:
I have blessed her often already.

You are the mother that bore her,
I do not blame you for weeping;
They had all gone before her,
And she had our hearts a-keeping;
And oh, the love that we bore her!

I thought that she was like you;
I thought that the light in her face
Was your youth and its morning dew,
And the winsome look of grace:
But she was never like you.

Is the night dark and wild?
Dark is the way of sin—
The way of an erring child,
Dark without and within—
And tell me not she was beguiled.

What should beguile her, truly?
Did we not bless them both?
There was gold between them duly,
And we blessed their plighted troth,
Though I never liked him truly.

Let us read a word from the Book;
I think that my eyes grow dim;
She used to sit in the nook
There, by the side of him,
And hand me the holy Book.

I wot not what ails me to-night,
I cannot lay hold on a text.
O Jesus! guide me aright,
For my soul is sore perplexed,
And the Book seems dark as the night.

Ah! the night is stormy and dark,
And dark is the way of sin;
And the stream will be swollen too; and hark
How the water roars in the Lynn!
There's an ugly ford in the dark.

What did you say? To-night
Might she sleep in her little bed?
Her bed so pure and white!
How often I've thought and said,
They were both so pure and white.

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But that was a lie—for she
Was a whited sepulchre;
Yet oh she was white to me,
And I've buried my heart in her;
And it's dead wherever she be.

Nay, she never could lay her head
Again in the little white room,
Where all her wee sisters were laid;
She would see them still in the gloom,
All chaste and pure—but dead.

We will go all together,
She, and you, and I;
There's the black peat-hag 'mong the heather
Where we could all of us lie,
And bury our shame together.

Any foul place will do
For a grave to us now in our shame;
She may lie with me and you,
But she shall not sleep with them,
And the dust of my fathers, too.

Is it sin, you say, I have spoken?
I know not; my head feels strange;
And something in me is broken;
Lord, is it the coming change?
Forgive the word I have spoken.

I scarce know what I have said;
Was I hard on her for her fall?
That was wrong, but the rest were dead,
And I loved her more than them all—
For she heired all the love of the dead.

One by one as they died,
The love, that was owing to them,
Centred on her at my side;
And then she brought us to shame,
And broke the crown of my pride.

Lord, pardon mine erring child:
Do we not all of us err?
Dark was my heart and wild;
Oh might I but look on her
Once more, my lost loved child!

For I thought, not long ago,
That I was in Abraham's bosom;
And she lifted a face of woe,
Like some pale, withered blossom,
Out of the depths below.

Do not say, when I am gone,
That she has brought my grey hairs to the grave;
Women do that; but let her alone,
She'll have sorrow enough to brave,
That would turn her heart into stone.

Is that her hand in mine?
Now, give me thine, sweet wife:
I thank Thee, Lord, for this grace of Thine,
And light, and peace, and life;
And she is Thine and mine.