She had never heard of angels,—but to gaze She knew not why, to see she knew not what, A-hungering outward from the barren earth For something like a joy. She liked, she said, To dazzle black her sight against the sky, For then, it seemed, some grand blind Love came down, And groped her out, and clasped her with a kiss; She learnt God that way, and was beat for it Whenever she went home,—yet came again, As surely as the trapped hare, getting free, Returns to his form. This grand blind Love, she said, This skyey father and mother both in one, Instructed her and civilised her more Than even the Sunday-school did afterward, To which a lady sent her to learn books And sit upon a long bench in a row With other children. Well, she laughed sometimes To see them laugh and laugh, and moil their texts; But ofter she was sorrowful with noise, And wondered if their mothers beat them hard, That ever they should laugh so. There was one She loved indeed,—Rose Bell, a seven years’ child, So pretty and clever, who read syllables When Marian was at letters; _she_ would laugh At nothing—hold your finger up, she laughed, Then shook her curls down on her eyes and mouth To hide her make-mirth from the schoolmaster. And Rose’s pelting glee, as frank as rain On cherry-blossoms, brightened Marian too, To see another merry whom she loved. She whispered once (the children side by side, With mutual arms entwined about their necks) ‘Your mother lets you laugh so?’ ‘Ay,’ said Rose, ‘She lets me. She was dug into the ground Six years since, I being but a yearling wean. Such mothers let us play and lose our time, And never scold nor beat us! don’t you wish You had one like that?’ There, Marian breaking off Looked suddenly in my face. ‘Poor Rose,’ said she, ‘I heard her laugh last night in Oxford Street. I’d pour out half my blood to stop that laugh,— Poor Rose, poor Rose!’ said Marian. She resumed. It tried her, when she had learnt at Sunday-school What God was, what he wanted from us all, And how, in choosing sin, we vexed the Christ, To go straight home and hear her father pull The Name down on us from the thunder-shelf, Then drink away his soul into the dark From seeing judgment. Father, mother, home, Were God and heaven reversed to her: the more She knew of Right, the more she guessed their wrong; Her price paid down for knowledge, was to know The vileness of her kindred: through her heart, Her filial and tormented heart, henceforth, They struck their blows at virtue. Oh, ’tis hard To learn you have a father up in heaven By a gathering certain sense of being, on earth, Still worse than orphaned: ’tis too heavy a grief, The having to thank God for such a joy!