To One in Custody + 

Villain! for years you’ve plied your awful trade + 

For wife, for widow and⁠—no, not for maid: + 

Even you’ll confess in chastity one true + 

Advantage⁠—its immunity from you. + 

About your hand, in clamorous appeal, + 

As round the blade of Calmar, shriek and wheel, + 

Like flights of Arctic seabirds, the forlorn + 

Pale ghosts⁠—mothers and babes unborn. + 

Now, villain, now, I pray your time has come⁠— + 

Mercy be deaf and intercession dumb! + 

No more, red-handed, in the path to life + 

May you be found alurk with eager knife, + 

Nor longer o’er the door to death display + 

The sign, “For Ladies.” Lo! day after day + 

For twenty years I’ve read on every wall + 

A handwriting prophetic of your fall. + 

And now the last dread syllable I spell + 

That damns your body to a felon’s cell⁠— + 

Your soul has long awaited you in Hell! + 