The father’s fury and the children’s cries
I soon could bear, but not my mother’s sighs;
For she look’d back on comforts, and would say,
‘I wrong’d thee, Ellen,’ and then turn away: 
Thus, for my age’s good, my youth was tried,
And this my fortune till my mother died. 
   “So, amid sorrow much and little cheer —
A common case—­I pass’d my twentieth year;
For these are frequent evils; thousands share
An equal grief—­the like domestic care. 
   “Then in my days of bloom, of health, and youth,
One, much above me, vow’d his love and truth: 
We often met, he dreading to be seen,
And much I question’d what such dread might mean;
Yet I believed him true; my simple heart
And undirected reason took his part. 
   “Can he who loves me, whom I love, deceive? 
Can I such wrong of one so kind believe,
Who lives but in my smile, who trembles when I grieve? 
   “He dared not marry, but we met to prove
What sad encroachments and deceits has love: 
Weak that I was, when he, rebuked, withdrew,
I let him see that I was wretched too;
When less my caution, I had still the pain
Of his or mine own weakness to complain. 
   “Happy the lovers class’d alike in life,
Or happier yet the rich endowing wife;
But most aggrieved the fond believing maid. 
Of her rich lover tenderly afraid: 
You judge th’ event; for grievous was my fate,
Painful to feel, and shameful to relate: 
Ah! sad it was my burthen to sustain,
When the least misery was the dread of pain;
When I have grieving told him my disgrace,
And plainly mark’d indifference in his face. 
   “Hard! with these fears and terrors to behold
The cause of all, the faithless lover, cold;
Impatient grown at every wish denied,
And barely civil, soothed and gratified;
Peevish when urged to think of vows so strong,
And angry when I spake of crime and wrong. 
All this I felt, and still the sorrow grew,
Because I felt that I deserved it too,
And begg’d my infant stranger to forgive
The mother’s shame, which in herself must live. 
When known that shame, I, soon expell’d from home,
With a frail sister shared a hovel’s gloom;
There barely fed—­(what could I more request?)
My infant slumberer sleeping at my breast,
I from my window saw his blooming bride,
And my seducer smiling at her side;
Hope lived till then; I sank upon the floor,
And grief and thought and feeling were no more: 
Although revived, I judged that life would close,
And went to rest, to wonder that I rose: 
My dreams were dismal,—­wheresoe’er I stray’d,
I seem’d ashamed, alarm’d, despised, betray’d;
Always in grief, in guilt, disgraced, forlorn,
Mourning that one so weak, so vile, was born;
The earth a desert, tumult in the sea,
The birds affrighten’d fled from tree to tree,
Obscured the setting sun, and every thing like me. 
But Heav’n had mercy, and my need at length