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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
TO AN UNSUNG MOTHERHOOD, by ROBERT WHITAKER
First Line: Mothers there are who never mothers were
Last Line: But one reward, love's labor to fulfil.
Subject(s): Childlessness; Mothers
First Line: Mothers there are who never mothers were
Last Line: But one reward, love's labor to fulfil.
Subject(s): Childlessness; Mothers
Mothers there are who never mothers were,
Whose breasts were never suckled by a child;
To motherhood denied them, reconciled
Where women's midnight Olivets occur.
Yet more than gold and frankincense and myrrh
They gave divinely, and as undefiled
As ever the fecundant sunlight smiled
To set a world of leaf and bloom astir.
Mothers of Mercy in the swamps of shame,
The Nightingales war's furies cannot still,
Willards and Bartons of redemptive will,
And the unnumbered unremarked of fame,
The childless mothers, angel-like, who claim
But one reward, love's labor to fulfil.
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