Sobbing, horribly shaken, he caught her falling body,
And dared not look at it.

“What have I done?” he asked himself, “what have I done?”

But the body felt strangely light in his arms,
And, curious, he looked, and behold!
There lay, not a woman, but a child in his arms …

And curiously he looked closer,
And he thought he knew the dead bleeding child.

And then he saw that the child was himself
Even as he was in the earlier days.

He laid the child on the hillside, and he wept sweet tears …

“I have slain the child in me!” he said …