There are sweet messengers of prayer Who down through space on soft wings steal, And offer aid to all who kneel. Her lips, unused to pious phrase, Recalled some words of bygone days, And “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep,” She whispered timidly, and then, “Lord, let me be a child again And grow up good.” The strange prayer said, Like some o’er-weary child, her head She pillowed on her arm, and wept Low, shuddering sobs, until she slept And dreamed; and in that dream she thought She sat within a vine-wreathed cot; An infant slumbered on her breast, She crooned a lullaby, and pressed Its waxen hand against her cheek, While one, too proud and fond to speak, The happy father of the child, Stood near, and gazing on them, smiled.
She woke while still the lullaby Was on her lips—then such a cry, As souls in fabled realms below Might utter, voiced her awful woe.
The mighty moral labour-pain Of new-born conscience wracked her brain And tore her soul. She understood The meaning now of womanhood, And chastity, and o’er her came The full, dark sense of all her shame. As some poor drunken wretch, at night, Wakes up to know his piteous plight, And sees, while sinking in the mire, Afar, his waiting hearth-light’s fire; So now she saw from depths of sin The hearth-light of the might-have-been. How beautiful, how like a star That lost light shone, but ah, how far!
She reached her longing arms toward space, And lifted up her tear-wet face. “O God,” she wailed, “I have been bad! I see it all, and I am sad, And long to be a good girl now. Lord, Lord, will some one show me how? Why, men have trod the burning track Of sin for years, and then gone back! And cannot I for sin atone, Or did Christ die for men alone? I want to lead an honest life, I want to be his own true wife And hold upon my breast his child.” Then suddenly her voice grew wild, “No, no,” she cried, “it could not be— Those infant eyes would torture me: Though God condoned my sinful ways, I could not meet my child’s pure gaze.”
She hid her face upon her knees, And swayed as reeds sway in a breeze. “O Christ,” she moaned, “could I forget, There might be something for me yet: But though both God and man forgave, And I should win the love I crave, Why, memory would drive me mad.”