This Last Night
Ah! how she trembles when the night is long;
And, sitting idle in her old arm-chair,
She hears the rude wind shout his drunken song,
While thoughts that sleep in light and only dare
To walk, like ghosts, on wildest nights forlorn,
Hold ghostly council till the breaking morn.
Thus, like the clangor of alarum-bells
When on a sleeping town the rabble springs,
A ringing in her pulses sobs and swells,
And times the tune the Bacchant Tempest sings;
Thus beats the hurried tocsin in her brain,
And all her soul is sacked by Fear again.
“Wild night! wild fear! strong love and stronger sin!
Ah, recompense too just for me to bear!
The casement shudders back: It flutters in:
The trembling shadow of my guilt is there:
In from the sleet,the night, the uproar wild,
My shame and my despair, my child, my child!
"O little form that I may never fold!
Beyond my empty arms my baby stands:
It sobs, it cries, it shivers with the cold:
Its eyes are his; it wrings its tiny hands.
Ah, God, my baby, that may never rest
In dewy slumber on my guilty breast!
"It was not I, thou little ghost, not I;
I slept as one who would not wake again;
They stole thee in my sleep. I could not die,
But woke to loss, and emptiness, and pain.
Oh, heinous crime to save an honored name,
That none might point a finger at my shame!
"Here in my bosom burns a fiery tide
No velvet baby-lips will suck away.
O cruel hurt of love! O hellish pride!
O murdered baby, take your eyes away!
Thou weary child no mother-love can warm,
Flit out into the night, the sleet, the storm.
"The wind is wilder. Ah, Christ, let me die!
Oh, Tempest, blow away my listless breath!
In some hid cavern with my child to lie—
O sudden hope, that gives me strength for death!”
She leaves the chair: she wanders far from home:
“I come, my little lonely one, I come!
I reach the river: oh, 't is cold, but thou
Art colder still, and I am with thee now.”
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