"Kind friends—over-persuaded—couldn't
leave—pleasant spectacle—such happy faces."
Some such murmurs reached my ear, as I put
my little companions into the carriage, and
their preceptress, following, waved me a sweet
adieu.

There was no scolding on the morrow.

MISERY.
I.

'TWAS neither day nor night, but both together,
Mix'd in a muddy smudge of London weather,
And the dull pouring of perpetual
Dim rain was vague, and vast, and over all.

She stray'd on through the rain, and through the mud,
That did the slop-fed filmy city flood,
Meekly unmindful as are wretches who,
Accustom'd to discomfortings, pursue
Their paths scarce conscious of the more or less
Of misery mingled with each day's distress.
Albeit the ghostly rag, too thin to call
Even the bodily remnant of a shawl
(Mere heaps of holes to one another stitch'd),
That tightly was about her shoulders twitch'd;
As at each step the fretful cough, in vain
By its vext victim check'd, brake loose again
And shiver'd through it, dripping drop by drop,
Contrived the flaccid petticoat to sop
With the chill surcharge of its oozy welt.

The mud was everywhere. It seem'd to melt
Out of the grimy houses, trickling down
Those brickwork blocks that at each other frown,
Unsociable, though squeez'd and jamm'd so close
Together; all monotonously morose,
And claiming each, behind his iron rail,
The smug importance of a private jail.
It seem'd to stuff the blurr'd and spongy sky
To clog the slimy streets, and fiercely try
To climb the door-steps, blind with spatter'd filth
The dismal lamps, and spew out its sick spilth
At unawares, from hiding-places, known
In dark street-corners to its spite alone.
She stray'd on through the mud: 'twas nothing new!
And through the rain—the rain? it was mud too!
The woman still was young, and Nature meant,
Doubtless, she should be fair; but that intent
Hunger, in haste, had marr'd, or toil, or both.
There was no colour in the quiet mouth,
Nor fulness; yet it had a ghostly grace
Pathetically pale. The thin young face
Was interpenetrated tenderly
With soft significance. The warm brown eye
And warm brown hair had gentle gleams. Perchance
Those gracious tricks of gesture and of glance,
Those clear and innocent arts—a woman's ways
Of wearing pretty looks, and winning praise,
The pleasantness of pleasing, and the skill,
Were native to this woman—woman still,
Though woman wither'd. There's a last degree
Of misery that is sexless wholly. She
Was yet what ye are—mothers, sisters, wives,
That are so sweet and lovely in our lives;—
A woman still, for all her wither'd look,
Even as a faded flower shut in a book
Is still a flower

II.

                              Dark darker grows. The lamps
Of London, flaring through the foggy damps,
Glare up and down the grey streets ghostily,
And the long roaring of loud wheels rolls by,
The huge hump-shoulder'd bridge is reach'd. She stops.
The shadowy stream beneath it slides, and drops
With sulky sound between the arches old.
She eyed it from the parapet. The cold
Clung to her, creeping up the creepy stream.
The enormous city, like a madman's dream,
Full of strange hummings and unnatural glare,
Beat on her brain. Some Tempter whisper'd, " There
Is quiet, and an end of long distress.
Leap down! leap in! One anguish more or less
In this tense tangle of tormented souls
God keeps no strict account of. The stream rolls
For ever and for ever. Death is swift,
And easy."
                       Then soft shadows seem'd to lift
Long arms out of the streaming dark below,
Wooingly waving to her.
                                           But, ah, no,
Ah, no! she is still afraid of them tonight,
Those plausible familiars. Die? what right
Is hers to die?—a mother and a wife,
Whose love hath given hostages to life!

The voices of the shadows make reply,

"Woman, No right to live is Right to die.
What right to live—which means, What right to eat
(What thou hast ceased to earn) the bread and meat
That's not enough for all—what unearn'd right
Hast thou to say, ' / choose to live'?"

                                                        With might
The mocking shadows mounted as they spoke,
Nearer and clearer; and their voices broke
Into a groan that mingled with the roar
Of London, growing louder evermore
With multitudes of meanings from below,
Mysterious, wrathful, miserable.
                                                 "Ah, no,
Ah, no! For Willie waits for me at home,
And will not sleep all night till I am come.
'Tis late .... but there were hopes of work to do:
I waited, though in vain. Ah, if he knew! . . .
And how to meet tomorrow?" . . .

                                                     A drunken man
Stumbled against her, stared, and then began
To troll a tavern stave, with husky voice
(The subject coarse, the language strong, not choice),
And, humming, reel'd away.

                                                  Upstream'd again
The voices of the shadows, in disdain:

"A mother? and a wife? Ill-gotten names
Filch'd from earth's blisses to increase its shames!
What right have breadless mothers to give birth
To breadless babies? Children meant for mirth,
And motherhood for rapture, and the bliss
Of wifehood crowning womanhood, the kiss
Of lips, whose kissing melts two lives in one:—
What right was thine, forsooth, because the sun
Is sweet in June, and blood beats high in youth,
To claim those blessings? claim'd, what right, forsooth,