One Among So Many

. . . In a dark street she met and spoke to me, Importuning, one wet and mild March night. We walked and talked together. O her tale Was very common; thousands know it all! 'Seduced'; a gentleman; a baby coming; Parents that railed; London; the child born dead; A seamstress then, one of some fifty girls 'Taken on' a few months at a dressmaker's In the crush of the 'season' at ten shillings a week! The fashionable people's dresses done, And they flown off, these fifty extra girls Sent — to the streets: that is, to work that gives Scarcely enough to buy the decent clothes Respectable employers all demand Or speak dismissal. Well, well, well, we know! And she — 'Why, I have gone on down and down, And there's the gutter, look, that I shall die in!' 'My dear,' I say, 'where hope of all but that Is gone, 'tis time, I think, life were gone too.' She looks at me. 'That I should kill myself?' 'That you should kill yourself.' — 'That would be sin, And God would punish me!' — 'And will not God Punish for this?' She pauses; then whispers: 'No, no, He will forgive me, for He knows!' I laughed aloud: 'And you,' she said, 'and you, Who are so good, so noble' . . . 'Noble? Good?' I laughed aloud, the great sob in my throat. O my poor Darling, O my little lost Sheep Of this vast flock that perishes alone Out in the pitiless desert! — Yet she'd speak: She'd ask me: she'd entreat: she'd demonstrate. O I must not say that! I must believe! Who made the sea, the leaves so green, the sky So big and blue and pure above it all? O my poor Darling, O my little lost Sheep, Entreat no more and demonstrate no more; For I believe there is a God, a God Not in the heaven, the earth, or the waters; no, But in the heart of Man, on the dear lips Of angel Women, of heroic Men! O hopeless Wanderer that would not stay, ('It is too late, I cannot rise again!') O Saint of faith in love behind the veils, ('You must believe in God, for you are good!') O Sister who made holy with your kiss, Your kiss in that wet dark mild night of March, There in the hideous infamous London streets, My cheek, and made my soul a sacred place, my poor Darling, O my little lost Sheep!