” YOU have been kind to me, I give you all
I have, my gratitude, and now I go
With this my own sweet babe, to join my friends.”
Alas, she had no friends, for all had turn’d
From her ; yet for shame’s sake she said
” I go to join my friends.”
Aimless she walk’d,
And when her baby cried she gave her breast
And sooth’d the child. The whole day long she walk’d
She knew not where, and when the sun declin’d
She lay beneath a hawthorn hedge and slept.
Before the morn, hungry and cold she wak’d
And fed her babe, but had herself no food.
And when the birds began to greet the day,
Plucking a hawthorn spray sweet with the breath
Of morn, she sighed and went with wearied step
Till faint, she stopp’d upon a rustic bridge
That spann’d a peaceful stream.
Her baby cried
And she had nought to give ; no one was near ;
The water seem’d to speak of peace and rest –
And while she gaz’d she tightly clasp’d her child
And leap’d into the pure inviting depth.
She seem’d to wake from sleep, and heard a voice,
And lo ! upon the grass the child lay dead.
A man meanwhile had brought an officer,
To whom she said she had been tired of life,
And she was sorry that she liv’d the while
The babe she lov’d, her lovely babe, lay dead.
They lock’d her in a prison cell, and charg’d
Her with the slaying of the child ; and when
The trial began, she whispering, said, ” 1 am
Not guilty, for I lov’d, I lov’d my babe.”
The labouring man who rescu’d her, declar’d
He saw her throw herself into the stream,
The babe being in her arms. The officer
Rehearsed her words to him. She wondered much
To hear her advocate suggest she might
Have slipp’d by accident into the stream ;
For she had told him all the truth ; her shame,
Her broken heart, her hungry babe, her leap.
” Guilty,” the Jury said, and brokenly
The judge pronounced the awful words of death.
She did not die ; the King was mov’d to act,
And after she had serv’d imprisonment,
She cross’d the seas, beginning life anew.
(Gerard Addington D Arcy Irvine)
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Based on Topics: Man Poems, Life Poems, Death & Dying Poems, War & Peace Poems, Friendship Poems, Kings & Queens Poems, Sleep Poems, Birds Poems, Truth Poems, Water Poems, Law & Regulation PoemsBased on Keywords: rehearsed, rescu, spann