When the shame that has darkened her days
Fantasmal at night fills the gloom,
When her soul, lost in wildering ways,
Flies the past, and the terror to come--
When she leaps from her slumbers to hark,
As if for her little one's call,
It is then to the pitiless dark
That her woe-burdened soul utters all:
"Woe is me! It was God's righteous hand
My brain with its madness that smote:
At the alien's flattering command
The land of my birth I forgot!
I, the girl who was loved and adored,
Feasted, honored in every place,
Now what am I? The apostate abhorred,
Who was false to her home and her race!
"I turned from the common disaster;
My brothers oppressed I denied;
I smiled on their insolent master;
I came and sat down by his side.
Wretch! a mantle of shame thou hast wrought;
Thou hast wrought it--it clingeth to thee,
And for all that thou sufferest, naught
From its meshes thy spirit can free.
"Oh, the scorn I have tasted! They know not,
Who pour it on me, how it burns;
How it galls the meek spirit, whose woe not
Their hating with hating returns!
Fool! I merit it: I have not holden
My feet from their paths! Mine the blame:
I have sought in their eyes to embolden
This visage devoted to shame!
"Rejected and followed with scorn,
My child, like a child born of sin,
In the land where my darling was born,
He lives exiled! A refuge to win
From their hatred, he runs in dismay
To my arms.
Pages:
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211