Over the rest let oblivion fall,
Cover it up with a funeral pall;
Turn away with a shudder and groan,
Let her live it over alone.
Few are the months, as they count, since then;
Short and joyous they else had been
That to anguished heart and maddened brain
Are long decades of woe and pain.
Over, again, on the wings of thought,
Treading the path which her ruin wrought;
Over again each step she went,
From the sunny home to the swift descent,
Where sin lies hidden 'neath a gilded pile,
Down to the haunts of the low and vile.
One more step and it all is done.
Only a shriek the midnight breaks--
Only a splash in the waves below,
A wider ripple the water makes.
The rock is bare by the ocean side--
A death-white face with the ebbing tide
Is floating away from the headland bold--
Out in the cold.

A lifeless form, in the wintry dawn,
Left on the sand by a rising swell;
A story of weakness, shame, and wrong
Mutely the frozen features tell.
Noiseless falls on it, the tears of dew,
Over it softly the breezes blow;
Wavelets, kissing the tangled hair,