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CHILD, child, will you have me die?
You are merciless in your mute despair.
Will there never be love again
Between us two? - Oh! life of my life,
Have I only lived for my mother care,
And now are we lost in a silent strife?
Child, is not yours also your mother's pain?
And you look on me stonily!
What was there left me to do?
Could I give my child to a libertine,
Could I give to one mocking God?
I would die to make him that which he aped,
But could I dare - Oh! child, were you mine
But that I should trample the bliss you shaped?
But the lonely cold home beneath the sod
Than his had been better for you.
Ah! surely if you had learned
By bitter taste the ill that I dread
You would think "Did my mother sleep,
Or did her love, that she yielded her child
To one whom it was but a curse to wed?
Yes she has held my happiness cheap,
For I by my young heart's love was beguiled,
But she must have surely discerned."
And now, do you think my cry
Went not wildly up in the sleepless night
With an anguish and storm of prayer
That God would spare me this bitterness?
Do you think I did not struggle with might
While the blood in my veins seemed less and less,
Sickened with pain before I could dare
To fashion him that reply?
Because you believed in him yet,
Because you loved him, and I - my own,
Think you I do not turn to you
With a yearning passionate agony?
And must I go mourning and alone
A love-reft mother? Ah! if you knew
How I steal in the night to where you lie
And I watch - ah! my cheeks so wet!
But you turn your heart from me,
You sit with a pale and sorrowful face,
Hushed and listless the live-long day
Till I even wish I could see you weep,
For you never stir from the selfsame place,
Your hands in your lap, and no word you say,
And I scarce know whether you wake or sleep,
Though I creep to your side to see.
Alas! and I hear your heart
Speak through the stillness its bitter plaint
"I who have loved my mother so dear,
I bleed from a deadly wound within,
And she it is" - Oh! my heart grows faint.
Child, my child, have you not one tear,
Not one smile for your mother to win?
Do not I also bear my part?
Yes I who must see you pine,
Worn with the weight of your heavy cross,
Paler and thinner day by day,
And know that my lips pronounced your doom,
Thus for my gain and your love for loss! -
Oh hear, my God, how I cry from the gloom,
Shall not this darkness vanish away? -
Oh my child art thou no more mine!
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A Woman Sold
Bartimaeus
Judas
Pilate
The Walk To Emmaus
A Bride
A March Night
A Messenger
A Mother's Cry
A Wedding
Afterwards
Dead Amy
Deserted
Dreaming
Glad Waves
Going
How The Brook Sings
If
In The Storm
In The Sunshine
Looking Downstairs
Mary Lost
Never Again
Night Whispers
On The Lake
On The Shore
Our Lily
Passing Away
Perjured
Safe
Shadow
Sunlight
The Blush Rose
The Gift
The Heiress' Wooer
The Hidden Wound
The Lake
The Land Of Happy Dreams
The Old Year Out
The Red Star On The Hill
The River
The Setting Star
The Shadow Of A Cloud
To And Fro
To One Of Many
Too faithful
Two Maidens |
