A Shade of Reason
While a mist was on a damp and softly cobbled street alone
A young man quickly hurried by in haste to reach his home
But as he passed an aged door a sight beheld his eye
For a young girl there was shivering, and crying
He paused, but only briefly and then turned to take her hand
As he noticed that she was with child and asked,
“Where is your man?”
She said, “I am a wayward girl, unwed, without a home.”
So he gave his coat to warm her from the cold.
Then taking her into his home, a small but quiet room
He fed her soup to warm her and the child within her womb
“How long before the baby comes?”, she said, “Most any day.”
“It’s too cold outside the window, you’d better stay.”
And as he shunned her meek protest her eyes began to close
The weariness of waking hours at last began to show
He laid her in his own soft bed as gently as he dare
And he stayed the night beside her, in a chair
And even as his eyes did close the morning air did yawn
The girl did waken from the rays of an early searching sun
Her eyes gazed on his body but they could not reach his mind
For the reasons of a good man, are hard to find
Shh, baby's dreamin
Through the days that ventured slowly he did treat her as his own
He did not even know her name or where she had come from
For seldom did she ever speak, so shy but unafraid
Then she screamed in pain one evening, ‘twas the babe
He took her to the hospital, they wheeled her through the door
For fourteen lonely troubled hours he tensely paced the floor
Then a nurse said, “It’s an eight pound boy, the mother’s doing fine
And the baby’s doing well sir, and crying”
He tiptoed through the doorway where the girl lay with her child
He did not step into her view, for he saw she wore a smile
He knew that she’d be happy now, her son would make her strong
With a soft prayer and a teardrop, he was gone
And sometimes as he’s standing on a cobbled street alone
He thinks about a wayward girl he once had taken home
Will she recall the moments that he nursed her faithfully
Will her mind think of the sorrow, and me
