Poetry Archives

It’s all for nothing:  I’ve lost him now.
I suppose it had to be;
But oh, I never thought it of him,
Nor he never thought it of me.
And all for a kiss on your evening out,
And a field where the grass was down . . .
And he ‘as gone to God-knows-where,
And I may go on the town.

The worst of all was the thing he said
The night that he went away;
He said he’d ‘a married me right enough
If I hadn’t ‘a been so gay.
Me—gay!  When I’d cried, and I’d asked him not,
But he said he loved me so;
An’ whatever he wanted seemed right to me . . .
An’ how was a girl to know?

Well, the river is deep, and drowned folk sleep sound,
An’ it might be the best to do;
But when he made me a light-o’-love
He made me a mother too.
I’ve had enough sin to last my time,
If ’twas sin as I got it by,
But it ain’t no sin to stand by his kid
And work for it till I die.

But oh! the long days and the death-long nights
When I feel it move and turn,
And cry alone in my single bed
And count what a girl can earn
To buy the baby the bits of things
HE ought to ha’ bought, by rights;
And wonder whether he thinks of Us . . .
And if he sleeps sound o’ nights.