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Arthur Symons - Jezebel Mort
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My name is Jezebel Mort: you know the thing that that means; 
If ever one comes into Court, they call us pleasure-machines. 
Aye, for men were we made, and men were made for our sex: 
Sordid and base our trade; there`s more than our trade to vex 
Even such simple souls with the thought of life and of death: 
For the devil, we know, plays bowls, and can whistle away our breath. 
Nay, none were born a saint, for we were born on the earth 
To be tainted by sin`s taint; some girls of us even from birth 
Had it just in their blood: sin, the veritable sin, 
That drenches one in the mud, up from the knee to chin, 
And leaves another a slut, base-born of a chimney-sweep: 
Heaven knows the reason, but angels never did weep. 

I was born in a room in a hideous bawdy-house, 
Conceived in my mother`s womb on the midnight of some carouse; 
That was likely enough. No sooner was I of age 
To know the price of the stuff that such as we know as the wage 
Paid in money or lust, than I walked in the Street; 
Flesh and bones, and a pinch of dust, and at last a winding-sheet! 
Then comes, after this, drink, and drink one finds quite nice; 
Then or before, I think, was one`s absolute knowledge of vice: 
Vice in the nature of us. Yes, in the innocent ones, 
Just as calamitous, as vice in the veins of their sons. 
Vice, I tell you, is in all; is a virtue to some, perhaps. 
We, girls after our fall, are caught in sinister traps, 
Just as they snare the birds; for brute men are snares, I say, 
Not in their uttered words, but men-devils cast in our way 
By the fiends in hell; aye, for their fiendish luxury. 

Well, we are all to sell: one for her beauty, you see, 
One for the lust of her eyes: these for their sensual lips; 
And for other things men prize more than one`s casual slips. 
One of us maybe gives herself as a very slave 
To the man for whom she lives; and before her one digs a grave. 
But for all that one thinks of one`s heart (that beats on the left side). 
We are sold in the mart, where men bargain from eventide 
Till the very Judgment-Day; so one imagines, at least. 

Now in the hospital grey, whose walls were built by no priest, 
Where, a white glare shines in on one`s very self in one`s bed, 
Drifting over one`s skin, touching the hair on one`s head; 

Well, there`s an end for me; just perhaps, where, there, nod 
Branches of a barren tree: and, this night, I go to my God. 

		Moll Boswell.
Dead she is as the just, she that walked in the street: 
Flesh and bones, and a pinch of dust, and at last a winding sheet!
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