Faded Beauty Poem by Francis Duggan

Bess O Brice from Black Oak Lane
She was lovely in her prime
But a mental break down has left it's stain
And she has aged before her time.

She is on life's middle page
Forty on her last birthday
Just barely forty years of age
And her hair completely gray.

Scarcely fifteen years ago
She was pride of all of the Town
Eyes as dark as ripened sloe
And curly locks of chestnut brown.

She had beauty, beauty rare
Beauty that attracted men
Bess O with the chestnut hair
Was number one beauty then.

Bess depicted loveliness
Rich young men sought her for wife
The future then seemed bright for Bess
But a nervous break down ruined her life.

She spent ten years of her life in hell
Ten long years of misery
In a house where mad folk dwell
Shut off from society.

locked up like a violent thief
And deprived of freedom's bliss
And left to wither like a leaf
In her own unhappiness.

She bloomed like a pretty flower
The Town's number one in days gone by
But gone for her the glorious hour
She no longer catch the eye.

She was such a lovely maid
Once a rare beauty to behold
But women age and beauty fade
And hard life makes a face look old.

She has lost her beauty place
Another woman wears her crown
A well curved maid with pretty face
Is the new queen of all the town.

Bess o Brice from Black Oak Lane
With wrinkled face and hair of gray
Her ten years in mental hell has left it's stain
On her Town queen of by gone day.