I know my beauty is fading—
Sin furrows the fairest brow—
And I know that your heart will weary
Of the face you smile on now.
You will take a bride to your bosom
After you turn from me;
You will sit with your wife in the moonlight,
And hold her babe on your knee.
Oh, God! I never could bear it;
It would madden my brain, I know;
And so while you love me dearly
I think I had better go.
It is sweeter to feel, my darling—
To know as I fall asleep—
That some one will mourn me and miss me,
That some one is left to weep,
Than to die as I should in the future,
To drop in the street some day,
Unknown, unwept and forgotten
After you cast me away.
Perhaps the blood of the Saviour
Can wash my garments clean;
Perchance I may drink of the waters
That flow through pastures green.
Perchance we may meet in heaven,
And walk in the streets above,
With nothing to grieve us or part us
Since our sinning was all through love.
God says, “Love one another,”
And down to the depths of hell
Will he send the soul of a woman
Because she loved—and fell?
* * * * * *
And so in the moonlight he found her,
Or found her beautiful clay,
Lifeless and pallid as marble,
For the spirit had flown away.
The farewell words she had written
She held to her cold, white breast,
And the buried blade of a dagger
Told how she had gone to rest.
BABYLAND.
AVE you heard of the Valley of Babyland,
The realm where the dear little darlings stay,
Till the kind storks go, as all men know,
And oh, so tenderly bring them away?
The paths are winding and past all finding
By all save the storks, who understand
The gates and the highways and the intricate by-ways
That lead to Babyland.