So, you're the chaplain! You needn't say what you have come for; I can guess. You've come to talk about Jesus' love, and repentance and rest and forgiveness! You've come to say that my sin is great, yet greater the mercy Heaven will mete, If I, like Magdalen, bend my head, and pour my tears at your Saviour's feet. Your promise is fair, but I've little faith: I relied on promises once before; They brought me to this--this prison cell, with its iron-barred window, its grated door! Yet he, too, was fair who promised me, with his tender mouth and his Christ-like eyes; And his voice was as sweet as the summer wind that sighs through the arbors of Paradise. And he seemed to me all that was good and pure, and noble and strong, and true and brave! I had given the pulse of my heart for him, and deemed it a precious boon to crave. You say that Jesus so loved the world he died to redeem it from its sin: It isn't redeemed, or no one could be so fair without, and so black within. I trusted his promise, I gave my life;--the truth of my love is known on high, If there is a God who knows all things;--his promise was false, his _love_ was a lie! It was over soon, Oh! soon, the dream,--and me, he had called "his life," "his light," He drove me away with a sneering word, and you Christians said that "it served me right." I was proud, Mr. Chaplain, even then; I set my face in the teeth of Fate, And resolved to live honestly, come what might, and sink beneath neither scorn nor hate. Yes, and I prayed that the Christ above would help to bear the bitter cross, And put something here, where my heart had been, to fill up the aching void of loss. It's easy for you to say what I should do, but none of you ever dream how hard Is the way that you Christians make for us, with your "sin no more," "trust the Lord." When for days and days you are turned from work with cold politeness, or open sneer, You get so you don't trust a far-off God, whose creatures are cold, and they, so near. You hold your virtuous lives aloof, and refuse us your human help and hand, And set us apart as accursèd things, marked with a burning, Cain-like brand.