Liveth in shame and sorrow, fearing his own handywork;
The mother, heart-stricken years agone, hath dropped into an early grave;
The silent sisters long to leave a home they cannot love;
The brothers, casting off restraint, follow their wayward wills;
And the chance-guest, early departing, blesseth his kind stars,
That on his humbler home hath brooded no domestic curse!
Yet is that curse the fruit; wouldest thou the root of the evil?
A kindness—most unkind, that hath always spared the rod;
A weak and numbing indecision in the mind that should be master;
A foolish love, pregnant of hate, that never frowned on sin;