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Title: The Motherless Child
Author: Dinah M. Mulock Craik [
More Titles by Craik]
SHE was going home down the lonely street,
A widow-woman with weary feet
And weary eyes that seldom smiled:
She had neither mother, sister, nor child.
She earned her bread with a patient heart,
And ate it quietly and apart,
In her silent home from day to day,
No one to say her "ay," or "nay."
She was going home without care to haste;
What should she haste for? On she paced
Through the snowy night so bleak and wild,
When she thought she heard the cry of a child,
A feeble cry, not of hunger or pain,
But just of sorrow. It came again.
She stopped--she listened--she almost smiled--
"That sounds like a wail of a motherless child."
A house stood open--no soul was there--
Her dull, tired feet grew light on the stair;
She mounted--entered. One bed on the floor,
And Something in it: and close by the door,
Watching the stark form, stretched out still,
Ignorant knowing not good nor ill,
But only a want and a misery wild,
Crouched the dead mother's motherless child.
What next? Come say what would you have done
Dear children playing about in the sun,
Or sitting by pleasant fireside warm,
Hearing outside the howling storm?
The widow went in and she shut the door,
She stayed by the dead an hour or more--
And when she went home through the night so wild,
She had in her arms a sleeping child.
Now she is old and feeble and dull,
But her empty heart is happy and full
If her crust be hard and her cottage poor
There's a young foot tripping across the floor,
Young hands to help her that never tire,
And a young voice singing beside the fire;
And her tired eyes look as if they smiled,--
Childless mother and motherless child.
[The end]
Dinah M. Mulock Craik's poem: Motherless Child
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