"Childless"

Childless

When my soul’s lamp shall flutter dim and low, 

Flare, and go out, no child of mine will stand 

Beside my couch and with a tender hand 

Caresses on my feeble form bestow, 

And murmur, weeping, “Ah, I loved her so!” 

No child of mine will kiss my frozen cheek 

Or kneel beside me and a prayer speak 

For my sad spirit passing lone and slow. 

But ah, when thro’ the gloom of that last night 

I have groped somehow, trembling and afraid 

Of unknown perils in my pathway wild, 

One will be waiting with her face alight 

And her lips sweet, and though she long had prayed— 

My mother—waiting for her childless child!

"Childless" printed in an unidentified publication, clipping courtesy of the Ella Higginson Papers, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Heritage Resources, Western Washington University, Bellingham WA.

"Childless" appears in the September 1906 Cosmopolitan.