Explore "Poems" by Elinor Jenkins on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The limbs she bore and cherished tenderly, / And rocked against her heart, with loving fears, / Through helpless infancy that all endears, / Unto the verge of manhood's empery, / Were fostered for this cruel end, and she / Kneeling beside him, looks through blinding tears / Down the long vista of the lonely years, / Void of all light, drear as eternity.
But her young son, who knows not that he dies, / Gives good-night lightly, on the utmost brink, / And, anguish overmastered for her sake, / Says smiling with stiff lips and death-dimmed eyes, / "Why, Mother, if you kiss me so, I'll think / You'll not be here to-morrow, when I wake."