“You will not understand, I know, How one like me can love you so. It was a strange, strange thing. Love came So like a swift, devouring flame And burned my frail, fair-weather boat And left me on the waves afloat, With nothing but a broken spar. The distant shores seem very far; I cannot reach them, so I sink. God will forgive my sins, I think, Because I die for love, like One The good Book tells about, His Son.
“For erring woman death can bring No pain so keen as memory’s sting. Good-night, good-bye. God bless you, dear, And give you love, and joy, and cheer! But sometimes, in the dark night, say A prayer for one who went astray, And found no pathway back, and died For love of you—a suicide.”
When morn his glorious pinions spread, They found the erring woman, dead.
She woke as one wakes from a deep And dreamless, yet exhausting, sleep.
A strange confusion filled her mind, And sorrows vague and undefined,
Like half-remembered faces pressed To memory’s window, in her breast,
Gazed at her with reproachful eyes. She felt a sudden, dazed surprise,
Commingled with a sense of dread, “I did but sleep—I am not dead,
“The potion and the purpose failed, And I still live,” she wildly wailed.
“Nay, thou art dead, rash suicide,” A sad voice spake: and at her side
She saw a weird and shadowy crowd With anguished lips, and shoulders bowed,
And orbs that seemed the wells of woe. She shrieked and veiled her eyes. “No, no!
“I am not dead! I ache with life. An earthly passion’s hopeless strife
“Still tortures me.” “Yet thou art dead,” The voice with sad insistence said.
“But love and sorrow and regret All die with death. _I_ feel them yet.”
“God bade thee live, and only He Can say when thou shalt cease to be.”
“But I was sin-sick, sad, alone— I thought by death I could atone,
“And died that Christ might show me how.” “Christ bore His burden, why not thou?”
“Oh! lead me to His holy feet And let my penance be complete.”
“What! thinkest thou to find that path— Thou who hast tempted Heaven’s wrath
“By thy rash deed? Nay, nay, not so, ’Tis but perfected spirits go
“To that supreme and final goal. A self-sought death delays the soul.
“With yonder shuddering, woeful throng Of suicides thy ways belong.
“Close to the earth a shadowy band, Unseen, but seeing all, they stand