Explore "Three Women" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Wooed, wedded and widowed ere twenty. The life / Of Zoe Travers is told in that sentence. A wife / For one year, loved and loving; so full of life's joy / That death, growing jealous, resolved to destroy / The Eden she dwelt in. Five desolate years / She walked robed in weeds, and bathed ever in tears, / Through the valley of memory. Locked in love's tomb / Lay youth in its glory and hope in its bloom. / At times she was filled with religious devotion, / Again crushed to earth with rebellious emotion / And unresigned sorrow.
Ah, wild was her grief! / And the years seemed to bring her no balm of relief. / When a heart from its sorrow time cannot estrange, / God sends it another to alter and change / The current of feeling. Zoe's mother, her one / Tie to earth, became ill. When the doctors had done / All the harm which they dared do with powder and pill, / They ordered a trial of Dame Nature's skill. / Dear Nature! what grief in her bosom must stir / When she sees us turn everywhere save unto her / For the health she holds always in keeping; and sees / Us at last, when too late, creeping back to her knees, / Begging that she at first could have given!