Explore "The Unwed Mother to the Wife" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I HAD been almost happy for an hour, / Lost to the world that knew me in the park / Among strange faces; while my little girl / Leaped with the squirrels, chirruped with the birds / And with the sunlight glowed. She was so dear, / So beautiful, so sweet; and for the time / The rose of love, shorn of its thorn of shame, / Bloomed in my heart. Then suddenly you passed. / I sat alone upon the public bench; / You, with your lawful husband, rode in state; / And when your eyes fell on me and my child, / They were not eyes, but daggers, poison tipped.
God! how good women slaughter with a look! / And, like cold steel, your glance cut through my heart, / Struck every petal from the rose of love / And left the ragged stalk alive with thorns.