{
 "id": "maria-lowell/the-slave-mother",
 "title": "The Slave-Mother",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Maria Lowell",
 "poet_slug": "maria-lowell",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Poems of Maria Lowell",
 "book_slug": "poems",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 6,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1907,
  "venue": "The Poems of Maria Lowell (1907)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofmarialowe00lowerich"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/maria-lowell_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://search.lib.virginia.edu/sources/uva_library/items/uva-lib:439721",
   "https://archive.org/details/poemsofmarialowe00lowerich"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 24,
  "n_stanzas": 6,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 68,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Her new-born child she holdeth, but feels within her heart",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It is not hers, but his who can out-bid her in the mart;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And through the gloomy midnight her prayer goes up on high,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“God grant my little helpless one in helplessness may die!”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "“If she must live to womanhood, oh may she never know,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Uncheered by mother’s happiness, the mother’s depth of woe!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And may I lie within my grave before that day I see,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "When she sits, as I am sitting, with a slave-child on her knee!”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The little arms steal upward, and then upon her breast",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She feels the brown and velvet hands that never are at rest;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No sense of joy they waken, but thrills of bitter pain⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She thinks of him who counteth o’er the gold those hands shall gain.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Then on her face she looketh, but not as mother proud,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And seeth how her features, as from out a dusky cloud,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Are tenderly unfolding, far softer than her own,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And how upon the rounded cheek a fairer light is thrown;",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And she trembles in her agony, and on her prophet heart",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There drops a gloomy shadow down, that never can depart⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She cannot look upon that face, where, in the child’s pure bloom,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is writ with such dread certainty the woman’s loathsome doom.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "She cannot bear to know her child must be as she hath been,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet she sees but one deliverance from infamy and sin⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And so she cries at midnight, with exceeding bitter cry,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“God grant my little helpless one in helplessness may die!”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}