POETRY.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1927, 28 April 1880, Page 3

POETRY.

DRUNK IN THE STREET. [Sydney “ Town and Country.”] “Drunk, your worship,” the officer said ; “Drunk in the street, Sir!” she raised her head. A lingering trace of the olden grace Still softened the lines of her woe-worn face, Unkempt and tangled her rich brown hair ; Yet with all the furrows and stains of care— The years of anguish, and sin, and despair— The child of the city was passing fair. The ripe, red mouth, with lips compressed— The rise and fall of the heaving breast— The nervous fingers, so taper and small, Crumple the fringe of the tattered shawl, As she stands in her place at the officer’s call. She seemed good and fair, she seemed tender and sweet This fallen woman found drunk in the street. Does the hand that once smoothed the ripple aud wave Of that tangled hair lie still in the grave ? Is the mother who pressed those red lips to her own Dead to the pain of their smothered moan ? Has the voice that chimed with the lisping prayer No account of hope for the lost one there, Bearing her burden of shame and despair ? Drunk in the street!—ia the gutters found— From a passionate longing to crush and drown The soul of the woman she might have been— To fling off the weight of a fearful dream, And awake again in the homestead hard by The wooded mountain that touched the sky: To linger awhile on the path to school And catch in the depths of the limpid pool, Under the willow shade, green and cool, A dimpled face and a laughing eye, And the pleasant words of the passer-by. Ye men with sisters and mothers and wives, Have ye no care for those women’s lives ? Must they starve for the comfort ye never speak ? Must they ever be erring, and sinful, and weak— Staggering onward with weary feet, Stained in the gutters, and drunk in the street ?