The rest? Oh, nothing. They hunted me, and with virtuous lawyers' virtuous tears To a virtuous jury, convicted me; and I'm sentenced to stay here for twenty years. Do I repent? Yes, I do; but wait till I tell you of what I repent, and why. I repent that I ever believed a man could be anything but a living lie! I repent because every noble thought, or hope, or ambition, or earthly trust, Is as dead as dungeon-bleached bones in me,--as dead as my child in its murdered dust! Do I repent that I killed the babe? Am I repentant for that, you ask? I'll answer the truth as I feel it, sir; I leave to others the pious mask. Am I repentant because I saved its starving body from Famine's teeth? Because I hastened what time would do, to spare it pain and relieve its death? Am I repentant because I held it were better a _grave_ should have no name Than a _living being_, whose only care must come from a mother weighed with shame? Am I repentant because I thought it were better the tiny form lay hid From the heartless stings of a brutal world, unknown, unnamed, 'neath a coffin lid? Am I repentant for the act, the last on earth in my power, to save From the long-drawn misery of life, in the early death and the painless grave? I'm _glad_ that I did it! Start if you will! I'll repeat it over; I say I'm _glad_! No, I'm neither a fiend, nor a maniac--don't look as if I were going mad! Did I not love it? Yes, I loved with a strength that you, sir, can never feel; It's only a strong love can kill to save, tho' itself be torn where time cannot heal. You see my hands--they are red with its blood! Yet I would have cut them, bit by bit, And fed them, and smiled to see it eat, if that would have saved and nourished it! "Beg!" I _did_ beg,--and "pray!" I _did_ pray! God was as stony and hard as Earth, And Christ was as deaf as the stars that watched, or the night that darkened above his birth! And I--I feel stony now, too, like them; deaf to sorrow and mute to grief! Am I heartless?--yes:--it-is-_all_-=cut=-OUT! Torn! Gone! All gone! Like my dead belief.