Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/457

SISTER BEATRICE That drag an unstained victim to the mire,

Then cast it soiled and hopeless on the mart!

Even so the clerk, once having dulled his longing,

A worse thing did than that first bitter wronging.

The base hind left her, ruined and alone,

Unknowing by what craft to gain her bread

In the hard world that gives to Want a stone.

What marvel that she drifted whither led

The current, that with none to heed her moan

She reached the shore where life on husks is fed,

Sank down, and, in the strangeness of her fall,

Among her fellows was the worst of all!

Thus stranded, her fair body, consecrate

To holiness, was smutched by spoilers rude.

And entered all the seven fiends where late

Abode a seeming angel, pure and good.

What paths she followed in such woeful state,

By want, remorse, and the world's hate pursued,

Were known alone to them whose spacious ken

O'erlooks not even the poor Magdalen.

After black years their dismal change had wrought

Upon her beauty, and there was no stay

By which to hold, some chance or yearning brought

Her vagrant feet along the convent-way;

And half as in a dream there came a thought

(For years she had not dared to think or pray)

That moved her there to bow her in the dust

And bear no more, but perish as she must.

Crouched by the gate she waited, it is told,

Brooding the past and all of life forlorn,

Nor dared to lift her pallid face and old

Against the passer's pity or his scorn; 427