With parents preventing her soul's release
By kisses that kept alive,—
With heaven's gold gates about to ope,
With friends' praise, gold-like, lingering still,
An instinct had bidden the girl's hand grope
For gold, the true sort—"Gold in heaven, if you will;
But I keep earth's too, I hope."
Enough! The priest took the grave's grim yield:
The parents, they eyed that price of sin
As if thirty pieces lay revealed