The Parsee Woman

(At Bombay)

Cast me out from among you, I will not see my child Laid aloft where the vultures May clamour for him, wild! The earth you say is holy, Not to be soiled by death, And a Parsee still should hold divine What Zoroaster saith.

Ay, and so I will hold it, But see his pale sweet face, As pure as the palest flower Left dead in Spring's embrace. The sun we worship daily Shrined it for seven years, Then shall it go to cruel beaks, There where the sea-wind veers?

No, no, no! tho you send me A beggar from your door, You, my lord, whom I honour, And you, his sisters four, To whom there have come no children To make your bosoms feel How even a thought so full of throe Can make my sick brain reel.

Ah, you are deaf? you scorn me And loathe, as a thing defiled? My lord, I am but a woman Who longs to see her child Laid in a tomb, entreasured Under the shrouding sod. O would I had never given birth, Or that earth had no God!