When woman drifts from good to bad, To make her final fall complete, She puts her soul beneath her feet. Man’s dual selves seem separate; He leaves his soul outside sin’s gate, And finds it waiting when he tires Of carnal pleasures and desires, Depleted, sickened, and depressed, As souls must be with such a test, Yet strong enough to help him grope Back into happiness and hope. But woman, far more complicate, Can take no chances with her fate; A subtle creature, finely spun, Her body and her soul are one. And now this erring woman wept The soul she murdered while it slept. She felt too stunned with pain to think. She seemed to stand upon a brink; Behind her loomed the sinful past, Below her, rocks, beyond her, vast And awful darkness. Not one ray Of sun or star to show the way! She drew a long and shuddering breath; “There is no other path but death For me to tread,” she sighed, “and so I will prepare my house and go.”
As housewives move with willing feet And skilful hands to make things neat And ready for some welcome one, She toiled until her tasks were done. Then, seated at her desk, she wrote, With painful care, a tear-wet note. The childish penmanship was rude, Ill spelled the words, the phrasing crude; Yet thought and feeling both were there, And mighty love and great despair. “Dear heart,” it ran, “you did not know How, from the first, I loved you so, That sin grew hateful in my sight; And so I leave it all to-night. The kiss I gave, dear heart, to you Was love’s first kiss, as pure and true As ever lips of maiden gave. I think ’twill warm my lonely grave, And light the pathway I must tread Among the hapless, homeless dead.
“When God formed worlds, He failed to make A path for erring feet to take Back into light and peace again, Unless they were the feet of men. When woman errs, and then regrets, Her sun of hope for ever sets, And life is hung with deepest gloom. In all the world there is no room For such as she; and so I hold That death itself is not so cold As life has seemed, since by love’s light I saw there was a wrong and right, And that my birthright had been sold, By my own hands, for tarnished gold. I hated labour, hence I fell; But now I love you, dear, so well, No greater boon my soul could crave Than just to toil, a galley-slave, Through burdened years and years of life, If at the last you called me wife For one supreme and honoured hour. Alas! too late I learn love’s power, Too late I realise my loss, And have no strength to bear my cross Of loneliness and dark disgrace. There cannot be another place So desolate, so full of fear, As earth to me, without you, dear.