Page:Poems Holley.djvu/126

It was a terrible sin that he had wrought,
 And since I had the burden of guilt to bear
It was enough without the wild despair of love,
 So I strove to reason my passionate love to hate.
Can we kneel with tears and bid the strong sun move
 Away from the sky? It is vain to war with fate.

That a hard life I have lived since then, 'tis true,
 My hands are unblackened by sinful wages since that day,
And my baby died, I was not fit, God knew
 To guide a sinless soul, so He took my bird away;
And my heart was empty and lone as a robin's winter nest,
 Without the trusting eyes that never looked scornfully,
The head that nestled fearlessly on my guilty breast,
 And the little constant hands that clung to me, even me.

But I knew it were best for God to unclasp her hand
 From mine, while yet she clung to it in trust,
Than for her to draw it from me, live to understand,
 Blush for her mother had she lived she must.
And then she had her father's smile, and his soft, dark eyes,
 Maybe she would have had his fair, false ways—his heart.
It is well that she passed through the starry gate of the skies
 Though it closed and bars us forever and ever apart.

For I am a sinful woman, well I know,
 And though by others' sins my own are not excused,