In deepest night, ‘neath bloody moon
And stars as cold as death,
Between the cracks of rugged stone
A wispy violet bloomed alone
And felt my dying breath.

No gust assailed its tender leaf,
But shallow, gasping sighs;
And round its roots a crimson stain
Spread wider with each breath of pain.
I closed my weary eyes.

To life my mem’ry cast its gaze,
To acts now writ in stone.
How strange to see this sentence end,
An awful tale in scarlet penned—
Its price I paid alone.

My crimes unnumbered all were black;
My master’s word was law.
By his command and my free will,
I plundered, robbed, and shot to kill;
And none survived who saw.

A caravan of wealth untold,
The echoed rumor said,
Must soon pass through our lonely vale;
For time is short and life is frail—
The reckless plunge ahead.

For war they came well fitted out,
And would not yield the way;
But in the chaos of the fight
A misplaced child, half-crazed with fright,
We seized and dragged away.

With rage my master’s eyes burned bright:
He would not stand defeat.
He reigned, the highway’s bloody king;
The merchant’s child would feel his sting,
His vengeance in retreat.

For days we kept her thus in fear,
Her torment just begun.
And though my past was dark and rank,
From these foul deeds my spirit shrank;
Oh, what had I become?

In depth of night I roused my friend,
Who only bore my trust;
The child between, we silent fled,
Two traitors now: the walking dead;
For what is man, but dust?

A journey cannot measure time
When death haunts every hour;
By day we cringed in shallow clefts,
By night we ran, of sleep bereft,
And knew our hunters’ power.

A chill wind whispered rain that day,
And hailed the road’s last miles;
We crouched beneath a fallen pine,
The child’s small hand slipped into mine,
And rested just awhile.

The cold of dusk began our march,
The longest and the last.
We paused; my friend turned sudden round,
His face drawn hard, his eyes profound,
With horror held aghast.

“You can’t,” I softly whispered,
“Look, we’ve almost reached the end.”
With glint of steel he answered me;
I looked, but found no place to flee.
“I’m sorry,” said my friend.

“They’ve trailed us now for days,” he said,
“We cannot both go back.”
Three shots rang out in moonlight still,
The child cried out; my blood ran chill
And turned my shirt front black.

To the dust from which I came I fell,
And heard her cries grow faint.
In vain I sought to rise again,
While, agonized, my soul gave in,
Crushed beneath its weight.

My best so futile, life so frail,
And I a worm indeed;
Yet, being nothing, could not fall,
And hope, so strange! I, after all,
Was not the first to bleed.

In deepest night, ‘neath bloody moon,
I breathed my last alone;
And a wispy violet, awed, beheld
A broken soul, by love compelled
Eternity to own.