my child Half unbalanced my reason; weak, wretched and wild With drink and with sorrows, the devil's own chance Flung me down by the side of a woman whose glance Was an opiate, lulling the conscience. I fell, With the woman who tempted me, down to dark hell. In the honey of sin hides the sting of the bee. The honey soon sated—the sting stayed with me. Like a damned soul I looked from my Hades, above To the world I had left, and I craved the pure love That but late had seemed cold, unresponsive. Her eyes, Mabel's eyes, shone in dreams from the far distant skies Of the lost world of goodness and virtue. Like one Who is burning with thirst 'neath a hot desert sun, I longed for her kiss, cool, reluctant, but pure. Ah! man's love for good women alone can endure, For virtue is God, the Eternal. The rest Is but chaos. The worst must give way to the best. Tell Mabel—Ruth, Ruth, she is here, oh thank God. 

And I dying. But truth

 She stood, like a violet sprung from the sod, By his bedside; pale, beautiful, dewy with tears. The spectre of death bridged the chasm of years: He sighed on her bosom.  "Forgive, oh forgive!" She kissed his pale forehead and answered him: "Live, Live, my husband! oh plead with the angels to stay Until God, too, has pardoned your sins. Let us pray." 

 Ruth slipped from the room all unnoticed. She seemed Like a sleeper who wakens and knows he has dreamed And is dazed with reality. On, as if led By some presence unseen, to the inn of the dead She passed swiftly; the pale silent guest whom she sought Lay alone on her narrow and unadorned cot. No hand had placed blossoms about her; no tear Of love or of sorrow had hallowed that bier. The desperate smile life had left on her face Death retained; but he touched, too, her brow with a grace And a radiance, subtle, mysterious. Under The half drooping lids lay a look of strange wonder, As if on the sight of those sorrowing eyes The unexplored country had dawned with surprise. 

 The pure, living woman leaned over the dead, Lovely sinner, and kissed her.  "God rest you," she said. "Poor suffering soul, you were forged in that Source Where the lightnings are fashioned. Love guided, your force Would have been like a current of life giving joys, And not like the death dealing bolt which destroys. Oh, shame to the parents who dared give you birth, To live and to love and to suffer on earth, With the serious lessons of life unexplained, And your passionate nature untaught and untrained. You would not lie here in your youth and your beauty If your mother had known what was motherhood's duty. The age calls to woman, "Go, broaden your lives," While for lack of good mothers 

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