We talked. She told me all her story out, Which I’ll re-tell with fuller utterance, As coloured and confirmed in aftertimes By others, and herself too. Marian Erle Was born upon the ledge of Malvern Hill To eastward, in a hut, built up at night To evade the landlord’s eye, of mud and turf, Still liable, if once he looked that way, To being straight levelled, scattered by his foot, Like any other anthill. Born, I say; God sent her to his world, commissioned right, Her human testimonials fully signed, Not scant in soul—complete in lineaments; But others had to swindle her a place To wail in when she had come. No place for her, By man’s law! born an outlaw, was this babe. Her first cry in our strange and strangling air, When cast in spasms out by the shuddering womb, Was wrong against the social code,—forced wrong. What business had the baby to cry there? I tell her story and grow passionate. She, Marian, did not tell it so, but used Meek words that made no wonder of herself For being so sad a creature. ‘Mister Leigh Considered truly that such things should change. They _will_, in heaven—but meantime, on the earth, There’s none can like a nettle as a pink, Except himself. We’re nettles, some of us, And give offence by the act of springing up; And, if we leave the damp side of the wall, The hoes, of course, are on us.’ So she said. Her father earned his life by random jobs Despised by steadier workmen—keeping swine On commons, picking hops, or hurrying on The harvest at wet seasons,—or, at need, Assisting the Welsh drovers, when a drove Of startled horses plunged into the mist Below the mountain-road, and sowed the wind With wandering neighings. In between the gaps Of such irregular work, he drank and slept, And cursed his wife because, the pence being out, She could not buy more drink. At which she turned, (The worm) and beat her baby in revenge For her own broken heart. There’s not a crime But takes its proper change out still in crime, If once rung on the counter of this world; Let sinners look to it. Yet the outcast child, For whom the very mother’s face forewent The mother’s special patience, lived and grew; Learnt early to cry low, and walk alone, With that pathetic vacillating roll Of the infant body on the uncertain feet, (The earth being felt unstable ground so soon) At which most women’s arms unclose at once With irrepressive instinct. Thus, at three, This poor weaned kid would run off from the fold, This babe would steal off from the mother’s chair, And, creeping through the golden walls of gorse, Would find some keyhole toward the secresy Of Heaven’s high blue, and, nestling down, peer out— Oh, not to catch the angels at their games,