[Editor: This poem by William Blocksidge (also known as William Baylebridge) was published in Songs o’ the South (1908).]
An Outcast
She steals along, ah! deadly pale;
And her eyes are dimmed and sad;
And the babe at her breast —so fondly pressed
To the milk that makes it mad —
It is cold. Ah! it is not clad
In the garments it might have had!
Ye Tongues of Pity, then, bewail
That a fair woman slipped and fell —
That a woman as sweet, as clean and neat,
As was she of whom I tell,
Now has tasted the fires of hell —
But you laugh as you toll this knell:
“Thou fool! beneath Convention quail:
’Tis a crime to bear a child!” —
Though it peopled the earth, this kind of birth
That the prudes have lately piled
With a scorn that is death, beguiled
Into thinking it more than wild.
Source:
William Blocksidge, Songs o’ the South, London: Watts, 1908, p. 6
Editor’s notes:
thou = (archaic) you
’tis = (archaic) a contraction of “it is”
toll = an audible signal given in a slow and measured fashion (especially the tolling of a bell, often used to announce a death, to communicate a signal or an announcement, or to call a congregation to church)
ye = (archaic) you (however, still in use in some places, e.g. in Cornwall, Ireland, Newfoundland, and Northern England; it can used as either the singular or plural form of “you”, although the plural form is apparently the more common usage)
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