Elizabeth Childers by Edgar Lee Masters — Read

Dust of my dust, / And dust with my dust, / O, child who died as you entered the world, / Dead with my death!

Not knowing Breath, though you tried so hard, / With a heart that beat when you lived with me, / And stopped when you left me for Life.

It is well, my child. For you never traveled / The long, long way that begins with school days, / When little fingers blur under the tears / That fall on the crooked letters.

And the earliest wound, when a little mate / Leaves you alone for another;

And sickness, and the face of Fear by the bed;

The death of a father or mother;

Or shame for them, or poverty;

The maiden sorrow of school days ended;

And eyeless Nature that makes you drink / From the cup of Love, though you know it's poisoned;

To whom would your flower-face have been lifted?

Botanist, weakling? Cry of what blood to yours? --

Pure or foul, for it makes no matter, / It's blood that calls to our blood.

And then your children -- oh, what might they be?

And what your sorrow? Child! Child!

Death is better than Life!