The Motherless Child

The Motherless Child

[The following sweet poem was read by the authoress at the re-opening of Colored Grammar School No. 1, March 12, 1860.—ED. ANGLO-AFRICAN]

Take the footstool, little creature—

Place it very gently down;

Smooth the wrinkles very neatly

From the pinnafore and gown.

Do not look from out the window,

Lest a green mound rise to view,

Very still and rounded over,

Where the last year's daisies grew.

Oh! I wish the child were playing

With her mimic housewife toys,

Broken dolls and battered trinkets,

Telling of unthrifty joys;

For the weird, unearthly sadness

Of a child of four short years,

Pricks me through and through with anguish,

All too deep for common tears.

See how neat the room is looking—

Not a shred upon the floor—

While a streak of golden sunshine

Enters in the open door.

Now a butterfly has fluttered

Over Mary's pretty head,

And she gazes, and she questions

If it cometh from the dead.

She is motherless—dear Mary!—

Therefore sitteth she so still,

Feeling a strange, sudden edict

To the young child's wayward will.

No one speaks the child unkindly—

Every voice is low and sweet—

Yet the eyes each one is shunning,

Of the motherless to meet.

They so tender, so beseeching—

Red with interdicted tears—

For the child of a dead mother

Groweth wise beyond her years.

See, her little cheek is resting

On her hand, and her small feet

Quite forget their restless motion

Where the flowers are bright and sweet.

All at once to her child-seeming,

Come a mystery and dread,

Stealthy voice and stealthy motion,

Silence, darkness, and the dead.

All her little brief existence

Felt the chaos sudden brought,

And she sank away in silence,

With her little world of thought.

Fold the small hands, tender Mary,

With the mystic, beaming eyes,

For, unconscious to your seeming,

There are mothers from the skies—

Heavenly mothers, thine amongst them,

Entering softly at the door,

And their silvery garments mingle

With the sunshine on the floor.

Elizabeth Oakes Smith

1:38, p. 1

4.7.1860