{
 "id": "voltairine-de-cleyre/betrayed",
 "title": "Betrayed",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Voltairine de Cleyre",
 "poet_slug": "voltairine-de-cleyre",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre",
 "book_slug": "selected-works",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 6,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1914,
  "venue": "Selected Works of Voltairine de Cleyre (1914)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/selectedworksvo01havegoog",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43098"
  ]
 },
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  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
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   "https://archive.org/details/selectedworksvo01havegoog",
   "https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/voltairine-de-cleyre-collected-poems",
   "https://www.google.com/books/edition/Free_Thought_Magazine/KNOMrVNM4CgC",
   "https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Open_Court/711CAQAAMAAJ",
   "https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Open_Court/6qzQAAAAMAAJ",
   "https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Worm_Turns/wslHAQAAMAAJ",
   "https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/voltairine-de-cleyre-a-new-hope",
   "https://archive.org/details/BostonInvestigator_1893-03-15"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 114,
  "n_stanzas": 12,
  "n_parts": 0,
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  [
   {
    "text": "So, you’re the chaplain! You needn’t say what you have come for; I can guess.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You’ve come to talk about Jesus’ love, and repentance and rest and forgiveness!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You’ve come to say that my sin is great, yet greater the mercy Heaven will mete,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If I, like Magdalen, bend my head, and pour my tears at your Saviour’s feet.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Your promise is fair, but I’ve little faith: I relied on promises once before;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They brought me to this⁠—this prison cell, with its iron-barred window, its grated door!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet he, too, was fair who promised me, with his tender mouth and his Christ-like eyes;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And his voice was as sweet as the summer wind that sighs through the arbors of Paradise.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And he seemed to me all that was good and pure, and noble and strong, and true and brave!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I had given the pulse of my heart for him, and deemed it a precious boon to crave.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "You say that Jesus so loved the world he died to redeem it from its sin:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It isn’t redeemed, or no one could be so fair without, and so black within.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I trusted his promise, I gave my life;⁠—the truth of my love is known on high,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If there is a God who knows all things;⁠—his promise was false, his love was a lie!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It was over soon, Oh! soon, the dream⁠—and me, he had called “his life,” “his light,”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He drove me away with a sneering word, and you Christians said that “it served me right.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I was proud, Mr. Chaplain, even then; I set my face in the teeth of Fate,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And resolved to live honestly, come what might, and sink beneath neither scorn nor hate.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yes, and I prayed that the Christ above would help to bear the bitter cross,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And put something here, where my heart had been, to fill up the aching void of loss.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "It’s easy for you to say what I should do, but none of you ever dream how hard",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is the way that you Christians make for us, with your “sin no more,” “trust the Lord.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When for days and days you are turned from work with cold politeness, or open sneer,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You get so you don’t trust a far-off God, whose creatures are cold, and they, so near.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You hold your virtuous lives aloof, and refuse us your human help and hand,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And set us apart as accursèd things, marked with a burning, Cain-like brand.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "But I didn’t bend, though many days I was weary and hungry, and worn and weak,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And for many a starless night I watched, through tears that grooved down my pallid cheek.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They are all dry now! They say I’m hard, because I never weep or moan!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You can’t draw blood when the heart’s bled out! you can’t find tears or sound in a stone!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I don’t know why I should be mild and meek: no one has been very mild to me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You say that Jesus would be⁠—perhaps! but Heaven’s a long way off, you see.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "That will do; I know what you’re going to say: “I can have it right here in this narrow cell.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The soul is slow to accept Christ’s heav’n when his followers chain the body in hell.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Not but I’m just as well off here⁠—better, perhaps, than I was outside.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The world was a prison-house to me, where I dwelt, defying and defied.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I don’t know but I’d think more of what you say, if they’d given us both a common lot;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If justice to me had been justice to him, and covered our names with an equal blot;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But they took him into the social court, and pitied, and said he’d been “led astray”;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In a month the stain on his name had passed, as a cloud that crosses the face of day!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He joined the Church, and he’s preaching now, just as you are, the love of God,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the duty of sinners to kneel and pray, and humbly to kiss the chastening rod.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If they’d dealt with me as they dealt by him, may be I’d credit your Christian love;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If they’d dealt with him as they dealt by me, I’d have more faith in a just Above.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I don’t know, but sometimes I used to think that she, who was told there was no room",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the inn at Bethlehem, might look down with softened eyes thro’ the starless gloom.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Christ wasn’t a woman⁠—he couldn’t know the pain and endurance of it; but she,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The mother who bore him, she might know, and Mary in Heaven might pity me.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Still that was useless: it didn’t bring a single mouthful for me to eat,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Nor work to get it, nor sheltering from the dreary wind and the howling street.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Heavenly pity won’t pass as coin, and earthly shame brings a higher pay.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sometimes I was tempted to give it up, and go, like others, the easier way;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I didn’t; no, sir, I kept my oath, though my baby lay in my arms and cried,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And at last, to spare it⁠—I poisoned it; and kissed its murdered lips when it died.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I’d never seen him since it was born (he’d said that it wasn’t his, you know);",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But I took its body and laid it down at the steps of his door, in the pallid glow",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the winter morning; and when he came, with a love-tune hummed on those lips of lies,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It lay at his feet, with its pinched white face staring up at him from its dead, blue eyes;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I hadn’t closed them; they were like his, and so was the mouth and the curled gold hair,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And every feature so like his own⁠—for I am dark, sir, and he is fair.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "’Twas a moment of triumph, that showed me yet there was a passion I could feel,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When I saw him bend o’er its meagre form, and, starting backwards, cry out and reel!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If there is a time when all souls shall meet the reward of the deeds that are done in the clay,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When accused and accuser stand face to face, he will cry out so in the Judgment Day!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The rest? Oh, nothing. They hunted me, and with virtuous lawyers’ virtuous tears",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To a virtuous jury, convicted me; and I’m sentenced to stay here for twenty years.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Do I repent? Yes, I do; but wait till I tell you of what I repent, and why.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I repent that I ever believed a man could be anything but a living lie!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I repent because every noble thought, or hope, or ambition, or earthly trust,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is as dead as dungeon-bleached bones in me⁠—as dead as my child in its murdered dust!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Do I repent that I killed the babe? Am I repentant for that, you ask?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I’ll answer the truth as I feel it, sir; I leave to others the pious mask.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Am I repentant because I saved its starving body from Famine’s teeth?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because I hastened what time would do, to spare it pain and relieve its death?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Am I repentant because I held it were better a grave should have no name",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Than a living being, whose only care must come from a mother weighed with shame?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Am I repentant because I thought it were better the tiny form lay hid",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From the heartless stings of a brutal world, unknown, unnamed, ’neath a coffin lid?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Am I repentant for the act, the last on earth in my power, to save",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "From the long-drawn misery of life, in the early death and the painless grave?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I’m glad that I did it! Start if you will! I’ll repeat it over; I say I’m glad!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No, I’m neither a fiend, nor a maniac⁠—don’t look as if I were going mad!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Did I not love it? Yes, I loved with a strength that you, sir, can never feel;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It’s only a strong love can kill to save, though itself be torn where time cannot heal.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You see my hands⁠—they are red with its blood! Yet I would have cut them, bit by bit,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And fed them, and smiled to see it eat, if that would have saved and nourished it!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Beg!” I did beg⁠—and “pray!” I did pray! God was as stony and hard as Earth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And Christ was as deaf as the stars that watched, or the night that darkened above his birth!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And I⁠—I feel stony now, too, like them; deaf to sorrow and mute to grief!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Am I heartless?⁠—yes:⁠—it-is-all-cut-out! Torn! Gone! All gone! Like my dead belief.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Do I not fear for the judgment hour? So unrepentant, so hard and cold?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wait! It is little I trust in that; but if ever the scrolled sky shall be uprolled,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the lives of men shall be read and known, and their acts be judged by their very worth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the Christ you speak of shall come again, and the thunders of Justice shake the earth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You will hear the cry, “Who murdered here? Come forth to the judgment, false heart and eyes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That pulsed with accursèd strength of lust, and loaded faith with envenomed lies!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Come forth to the judgment, haughty dames, who scathed the mother with your scorn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And answer here, to the poisoned child, who decreed its murder ere it was born?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Come forth to the judgment ye who heaped the gold of earth in your treasured hoard,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And answer, ‘guilty,’ to those who stood all naked and starving, beneath your board.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Depart, accursèd! I know you not! Ye heeded not the command of Heaven,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "‘Unto the least of these ye give, it is even unto the Master given.’ ”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Judgment! Ah, sir, to see that day, I’d willingly pass thro’ a hundred hells!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I’d believe, then, the Justice that hears each voice buried alive in these prison cells!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But, no⁠—it’s not that; that will never be! I trusted too long, and He answered not.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There is no avenging God on high!⁠—we live, we struggle, and⁠—we rot.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Yet does Justice come! and, O Future Years! sorely ye’ll reap, and in weary pain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When ye garner the sheaves that are sown to-day, when the clouds that are gathering fall in rain!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The time will come, aye! the time will come, when the child ye conceive in lust and shame,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Quickened, will mow you like swaths of grass, with a sickle born of Steel and Flame.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Aye, tremble, shrink, in your drunken den, coward, traitor, and Child of Lie!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The unerring avenger stands close to you, and the dread hour of parturition’s nigh!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Aye! wring your hands, for the air is black! thickly the cloud-troops whirl and swarm!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "See! yonder, on the horizon’s verge, play the lightning-shafts of the coming storm!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}