Seeking Her Boy Poem by James Ephraim McGirt

Upon a battlefield, when the smoke had cleared away,
I saw a woman strolling 'mong the dead;
It was a mother, feeble, old and gray;
Often she'd stoop and raise a soldier's head.

She seeking for her boy, her only pride,
A soldier, had been taken from his home;
She'd heard that he had fallen in the fray:
She came to bear his body to the tomb.

She reached the place where raged the thickest fray;
The dead were lying thickly on the ground;
'Twas there I saw the mother kneel and pray;
The loving boy the mother had not found.

Up from the ground with trembling form she rose,
The tears were falling freely from her eyes;
With folded arms toward heaven she gazed:
'Oh, where's my boy!' with throbbing voice she cries.

She turned and saw a form amid the gore;
She knew it was the body of her own;
As swift as lightning to the form she tore,
Around his neck her arm was quickly thrown.

She raised his head, his blood-stained lips she kissed,
She then beheld the bullet's gaping wound;
She was too weak, and could not gaze on this;
She gave a cry, sank helpless to the ground.

I watched at length to see the mother rise,
She did not seem to raise her hoary head;
I neared and paused, the mother by his side,
Still clinging to his neck, though she was dead.