THE NIGHT BEFORE
Pity, at first, all breathing creatures
On this bewildered earth. I studied
Their faces and made for myself the story
Of all their scattered lives. Like brothers
And sisters they seemed to me then; and I nourished
A stranger friendship wrought in my fancy
Between those people and me. But somehow,
As time went on, there came queer glances
Out of their eyes, and the shame that stung me
Harassed my pride with a crazed impression
That every face in the surging city
Was turned to me; and I saw sly whispers,
Now and then, as I walked and wearied
My wasted life twice over in bearing
With all my sorrow the sorrows of others,—
Till I found myself their fool. Then I trembled,—
A poor scared thing,—and their prying faces
Told me the ghastly truth: they were laughing
At me and my fate. My God, I could feel it—
That laughter! And then the children caught it;
And I, like a struck dog, crept and listened.
And then when I met the man who had weakened
A woman's love to his own desire,
It seemed to me that all hell were laughing
In fiendish concert! I was their victim—
And his, and hate's. And there was the struggle.
As long as the earth we tread holds something
A tortured heart can love, the meaning
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