Ah cruel words!  No!  Blessed, godlike words. 
You had done nobly had you struck me dead,
Instead of striking me to life!—­the temptress! . . . 
’Traitress! apostate! dead to God and me!’—­
’The smell of death upon me?’—­so it was! 
True! true! well spoken, hero!  Oh they snapped,
Those words, my madness, like the angel’s voice
Thrilling the graves to birth-pangs.  All was clear. 
There was but one right thing in the world to do;
And I must do it. . . .  Lord, have mercy!  Christ! 
Help through my womanhood:  or I shall fail
Yet, as I failed before! . . .  I could not speak—­
I could not speak for shame and misery,
And terror of my sin, and of the things
I knew were coming:  but in heaven, in heaven! 
There we should meet, perhaps—­and by that time
I might be worthy of you once again—­
Of you, and of my God. . . .  So I went out.
. . . . . . 
Will you hear more, and so forget the pain? 
And yet I dread to tell you what comes next;
Your love will feel it all again for me. 
No! it is over; and the woe that’s dead
Rises next hour a glorious angel.  Love! 
Say, shall I tell you?  Ah! your lips are dry! 
To-morrow, when they come, we must entreat,
And they will give you water.  One to-day,
A soldier, gave me water in a sponge
Upon a reed, and said, ’Too fair! too young! 
She might have been a gallant soldier’s wife!’
And then I cried, ’I am a soldier’s wife! 
A hero’s!’ And he smiled, but let me drink. 
God bless him for it! 
   So they led me back: 
And as I went, a voice was in my ears
Which rang through all the sunlight, and the breath
And blaze of all the garden slopes below,
And through the harvest-voices, and the moan
Of cedar-forests on the cliffs above,
And round the shining rivers, and the peaks
Which hung beyond the cloud-bed of the west,
And round the ancient stones about my feet. 
Out of all heaven and earth it rang, and cried,
’My hand hath made all these.  Am I too weak
To give thee strength to say so?’ Then my soul
Spread like a clear blue sky within my breast,
While all the people made a ring around,
And in the midst the judge spoke smilingly—­
‘Well! hast thou brought him to a better mind?’
’No!  He has brought me to a better mind!’—­
I cried, and said beside—­I know not what—­
Words which I learnt from thee—­I trust in God
Nought fierce or rude—­for was I not a girl
Three months ago beneath my mother’s roof? 
I thought of that.  She might be there!  I looked—­
She was not there!  I hid my face and wept. 
And when I looked again, the judge’s eye
Was on me, cold and steady, deep in thought—­
‘She knows what shame is still; so strip her.’  ‘Ah!’
I shrieked, ’Not that, Sir!  Any pain!  So young
I am—­a wife too—­I am not my own,
But his—­my husband’s!’ But they took my shawl,