I don't know, but sometimes I used to think that she, who was told there was no room In the inn at Bethlehem, might look down with softened eyes thro' the starless gloom. Christ wasn't a woman--he couldn't know the pain and endurance of it; but _she_, The mother who bore him, she might know, and Mary in Heaven might pity me. Still that was useless: it didn't bring a single mouthful for me to eat, Nor work to get it, nor sheltering from the dreary wind and the howling street. Heavenly pity won't pass as coin, and earthly shame brings a higher pay. Sometimes I was tempted to give it up, and go, like others, the easier way; But I didn't; no, sir, I kept my oath, though my baby lay in my arms and cried, And at last, to spare it--I poisoned it; and kissed its murdered lips when it died. I'd never seen him since it was born (he'd said that it wasn't his, you know); But I took its body and laid it down at the steps of his door, in the pallid glow Of the winter morning; and when he came, with a love-tune hummed on those lips of lies, It lay at his feet, with its pinched white face staring up at him from its dead, blue eyes; I hadn't closed them; they were like his, and so was the mouth and the curled gold hair, And every feature so like his own,--for I am dark, sir, and he is fair. 'Twas a moment of triumph, that showed me yet there was a passion I could feel, When I saw him bend o'er its meagre form, and, starting backwards, cry out and reel! If there _is_ a time when all souls shall meet the reward of the deeds that are done in the clay, When accused and accuser stand face to face, he will cry out so in the Judgment Day!