Now you could not blot that beginning So beautiful, pure and true, With a record of wicked sinning As a common woman might do. Look up in your old frank fashion, With your smile so free from art; And say that no guilty passion Has ever crept into your heart.
How pallid you are, and you tremble! You are hiding your face from view! “Tho’ a sinner, you cannot dissemble”-- My God! then the tale is true? True and the sun above us Shines on in the summer skies? And men say the angels love us, And that God is good and wise.
Yet he lets a wanton thing like you Ruin my home and my name! Get out of my sight ere I strike you Dead in your shameless shame! No, no, I was wild, I was brutal; I would not take your life, For the efforts of death would be futile To wipe out the sin of a wife. Wife--why, that word has seemed sainted, I uttered it like a prayer. And now to think it is tainted-- Christ! how much we can bear!
“Slay you!” my boy’s stained mother-- Nay, that would not punish, or save; A soul that has outraged another Finds no sudden peace in the grave. I will leave you here to _remember_ The Eden that was your own, While on toward my life’s December I walk in the dark alone.
You remember the hall on the corner? To-night as I walked down street I heard the sound of music, And the rhythmic beat and beat, In time to the pulsing measure Of lightly tripping feet.
And I turned and entered the doorway-- It was years since I had been there-- Years, and life seemed altered: Pleasure had changed to care. But again I was hearing the music And watching the dancers fair.
And then, as I stood and listened, The music lost its glee; And instead of the merry waltzers There were ghosts of the Used-to-be-- Ghosts of the pleasure-seekers Who once had danced with me.
Oh, ’twas a ghastly picture! Oh, ’twas a gruesome crowd! Each bearing a skull on his shoulder, Each trailing a long white shroud, As they whirled in the dance together, And the music shrieked aloud.
As they danced, their dry bones rattled Like shutters in a blast; And they stared from eyeless sockets On me as they circled past; And the music that kept them whirling Was a funeral dirge played fast.
Some of them wore their face-cloths, Others were rotted away. Some had mould on their garments, And some seemed dead but a day. Corpses all, but I knew them As friends, once blithe and gay.