Page:Ballads of a Bohemian.djvu/146

144 Let’s seek the beauty-spots of earth, Dear Heart, just you and I; Let other women bring forth life with sorrow and with pain. Above our door we’ll hang the sign: ‘''No children need apply…’” The Spirit of the Unborn Babe sped through the night again.

The Spirit of the Unborn Babe went whirling on and on; It soared above a city vast, it swept down to a slum; It saw within a grimy house a light that dimly shone; It peered In through a window-pane and lo! a voice said: “Come!” And so a little girl was born amid the dirt and din, And lived In spite of everything, for life is ordered so; A child whose eyes first opened wide to swinishness and sin, A child whose love and innocence met only curse and blow. And so in due and proper course she took the path of shame, And gladly died in hospital, quite old at twenty years; And when God comes to weigh it all, ah! whose shall be the blame For all her maimed and poisoned life, her torture and her tears?