Poem by Edith Nesbit

In Trouble

   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.

1. To One Who Pleaded for Candour in Love
2. Love and Knowledge
3. The Stolen God
4. The Eternal
5. A Portrait

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