“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;” thirteen 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,

O my poor darling, O my little lost sheep!