A WOMAN’S QUESTION
By Adelaide Annie Procter
Before I trust my fate to thee,
Or place my hand in thine,
Before I let thy future give
Color and form to mine,
Before I peril all for thee, question thy
soul to-night for me
I break all slighter bonds, nor feel
A shadow of regret;
Is there one link within the past
That holds thy sprit yet?
Or is thy faith as clear and free as that
which I can pledge to thee
Does
there within thy dimmest dreams
A possible future shine,
Wherein thy life could henceforth breathe,
Untouched, unshared by mine?
If so, at any pain or cost, O, tell me
before all is lost.
Look deeper still. If thou can’st feel
Within thy inmost soul,
That thou hast kept a portion back,
While I have staked the whole;
Let no false pity spare the blow, but
In true mercy tell me so.
Is there a within thy heart a need
That mine cannot fulfil?
One chord that any other hand
Could better wake or still ?
Speak now – lest at some future day
My whole life wither and decay.
Lives there within thy nature hid
The demon-sprit change,
Shedding a passing glory still
On all things new and strange? –
It may not be thy fault alone –but
shield my heart against thy own.
Could’st thou withdraw thy hand one day
And answer to my claim
That fate, and that to-day’s mistake –
Not thou – had been to blame?
Some soothe their conscience thus; but
thou wilt surely warn and save me.
Nay, answer not – I dare not hear,
The word’s would come too late;
Yet I would spare thee all remorse,
So comfort thee, my fate –
Whatever on my heart may fall –
Remember, I would risk it all!
(Title: A Woman's Question
Author: Adelaide
Annie Procter, 1825-1864
Location: Unknown, known copy in Curious Rhymes, A Woman Question, March
1854, p 93
Date: estimated of article 1869 -1870
This poem is in the form of a newspaper article glued to Page
194 in the Ledger of Captain W.B. Blair)
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