Betrayed
By Angela Morgan
Bad, hopelessly bad!
I yielded to love that sways mankind,
Not the mere measure of bodily pleasure,
But love that wakes in the soul and the mind,
Born of the spirit at God’s behest:
And I bartered all I had.
I, with the warmth of a child at my breast—
Am bad, hopelessly bad!
Yet the power that molded my little son,
Is the same that moved for the wedded one;
Creation’s woes were just the same;
Had he only borne a father’s name.
Did love, that old fashioned universe
Fashion alike my curse?
Listen, you who are true and good,
White and strong in your motherhood;
You with your wedding ring safe on your finger,
You who can linger, righteous and clean in love’s embrace:
Tell me the reason that I am base!
Are you so different after all?
I answered the same high golden call
I yielded to love that is proud of pain—
Love, that reckoned not for gain;
And nature has made my child so fair,
As the child on your very shoulder there.
The same great impulse, deep and glad,
That hurls the suns and drives the earth
Brought both our children to this earth.
Yet ... you are good and I am bad,
Vicious and evil and low, they say—
“A girl who has gone astray”;
Yet the milk of my life is warm and white
That runs to his hungry mouth at night;
My words are soft, my arms are sweet,
My hands are kind to his little feet.
Can I, who live for my baby’s smile,
Be vile, hopelessly vile?
O, great, broad, beautiful judgment day,
When dogmas of man are rent asunder,
And superstition is wiped away,
Will you plead for me, will you gently speak
For us who are voiceless and weak?
Plead for us, who must ever wonder?
Why we are hounded and held at bay—
We who can love, we who can pray:
We, the mothers, who might be glad,
But are broken at heart and bitter and sad;
O, Future Day, will you write in flame,
The reason for sin and the reason for shame?
That in all the city there seemed no room
No sweet clean place for my heart to bloom!
Oh, will you terribly tell the truth;
That the world which offers no worthy place,
For the light that shines in my baby’s face,
Offered no shelter for love and youth,
No guarding presence who understood,
My blossoming womanhood?
So I sought his arms as a bird to nest
And I ... with the warmth of a child on my breast
I ... who bartered all that I had
Am bad ... hopelessly bad!
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