And so it came that Margery's name
Fell into a burden of Sorrow and Shame,
And Margery's face grew familiar in
The market-place where they trade in sin.
What use to dwell on this premature Hell?
Suffice it to say that the child did well,
Till one night that Margery prowled the town,
Sickness was stalking, and struck her down.
Her beauty pass'd, and she stood aghast
In the presence of want, and stripped, at the last,
Of all she had to be pawned or sold,
To keep her darling from hunger and cold.
So the baby pined, till Margery, blind
With hunger of fever, in body and mind,
At dusk, when Death seem'd close at hand,
Snatch'd a loaf of bread from a baker's stand.
Some Samaritan saw Margery Daw,
And lock'd her in gaol to lie upon straw:
Not a sparrow falls, they say—Oh well!
God was not looking when Margery fell.
With irons girt, in her felon's shirt,
Poor Margery lies in sorrow and dirt,
A gaunt, sullen woman untimely gray,
With the look of a wild beast, brought to bay.
See-saw! Margery Daw!
What a wise and bountiful thing, the Law!
It makes all smooth—for she's out of her head,
And her brat is provided for. It's dead.
[WILLIAM H. WOODS]
William Hervey Woods, poet, was born near Greensburg, Kentucky, November 17, 1852, the son of a clergyman. He was educated at Hampden-Sidney College, in Virginia, after which he studied for the church at Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia. Mr. Woods was ordained to the ministry of the Southern Presbyterian church in 1878; and since 1887 he has been pastor of the Franklin Square church at Baltimore. For the past several years he has contributed poems to Scribner's, Harper's, The Century, The Atlantic Monthly, The Youth's Companion, The Independent, and several other periodicals. This verse was collected and published in a pleasing little volume of some hundred and fifty pages under the title of The Anteroom and Other Poems (Baltimore, 1911). As is true of the purely literary labors of most clergymen, a few of the poems are somewhat marred by the homiletical tone—they simply must point a moral, even though that moral does not adorn the tale. Several of the poems reveal the author's love for his birthplace, Kentucky; and, taken as a whole, the book is one of which any of our singers might be proud.