The Star in the West

THE VIRGIN 73 Childbirth sobered me . I loved the child , the only human love I ever tasted , and I sacrificed The popularity , the infamy, Of my old life ; I sought another world . I “ got religion " -how I hate the phrase ! So jest the matron newspapers . ... For I will do without a mother's name If only I may keep a son's love still ! ' It is not here that we can enter on the fearful tragedy of these short dozen pages , suffice it to say , that it was that of Phædra and Hippolytus , the sexes however being reversed . Shamed , insulted by her son , she still dares kiss him : Why I dare Now take your head between my hands and kiss Your forehead with these shameful lips of mine, These harlot lips , and kiss you unashamed ? ? Outraged , ravished by the offspring of her vice , yet child of her heart , she still can say as she sees him stand before her , a fiendish monster , with the bloody razor with which he has just slain Madeline , a pure and innocent girl : Kill yourself. Such was her love , her duty to her motherhood ; very different indeed was the love of Ratoum . But anon . Another picture of maternal affection , this time more musical , we find in “ The Spring after, ” of “ Mysteries : Lyrical and Dramatic " : No smallest cloud between me and my bride Came like a little mist ; one tender fear, Too sweet to speak of, closed the dying year 1 The Mother's Tragedy , vol. i, p. 157. ? Ibid . vol. i, p. 161.