NE AMONG SO MANY."

. . . In a dark street she met and spoke to me,
Importuning, one wet and mild March night.
We walked and talked together. O her tale
Was very common; thousands know it all!
Seduced; a gentleman; a baby coming;
Parents that railed; London; the child born dead;
A seamstress then, one of some fifty girls
"Taken on" a few months at a dressmaker's
In the crush of the "season;" thirteen shillings a week!
The fashionable people's dresses done,
And they flown off, these fifty extra girls
Sent--to the streets: that is, to work that gives
Scarcely enough to buy the decent clothes
Respectable employers all demand
Or speak dismissal. Well, well, well, we know!
And she--"_Why_, _I have gone on down and down_,
_And there's the gutter_, _look_, _that I shall die in_!"
"My dear," I say, "where hope of all but that
Is gone, 'tis time, I think, life were gone too."
She looks at me. "_That I should kill myself_?"--
"That you should kill yourself."--"_That would be sin_,
_And God would punish me_!"--"And will not God
Punish for this?" She pauses: then whispers:
"_No_, _no_, _He will forgive me_, _for He knows_!"
I laughed aloud: "_And you_," she said, "_and you_,
_Who are so good_, _so noble_" . . . "Noble? Good?"
I laughed aloud, the great sob in my throat.
O my poor darling, O my little lost sheep
Of this vast flock that perishes alone
Out in the pitiless desert!--Yet she'd speak:
She'd ask me: she'd entreat: she'd demonstrate.
O I must not say that! I must believe!
Who made the sea, the leaves so green, the sky
So big and blue and pure above it all?
O my poor darling, O my little lost sheep,
Entreat no more and demonstrate no more;
For I believe there _is_ a God, a God
Not in the heaven, the earth, or the waters; no,
But in the heart of man, on the dear lips
Of angel women, of heroic men!
O hopeless wanderer that would not stay,
("_It is too late_, _I cannot rise again_!")
O saint of faith in love behind the veils,
("_You must believe in God_, _for you are good_!"),
O sister who made holy with your kiss,
Your kiss in that wet dark mild night of March
There in the hideous infamous London streets
My cheek, and made my soul a sacred place,
O my poor darling, O my little lost sheep!

THE NEW LOCKSLEY HALL.
"FORTY YEARS AFTER."

Comrade, yet