Page:Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads (1892).djvu/111

In the heel of the wind-bit pier,
 Where the twisted weed was piled,
She came to the life she had missed by an hour,
 For she came to a little child,

She laid it into her breast,
 And back to her mother she came,
But it would not feed and it would not heed,
 Though she gave it her own child’s name.

And the dead child dripped on her breast,
 And her own in the shroud lay stark;
And ‘God forgive us, mother,’ she said,
 ‘We let it die in the dark!’