Only a Working Girl

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ONLY A WORKING GIRL.

She’s only a working girl, busy each day
In gaining her portion of bread;
Her mother is old and infirm, so they say,
Her father, they tell me, is dead.
And there, at her window, I see her employed —
I glance at her morning and night,
And I think that without her the earth would be void
Of much of its beauty and light.

She’s only a working girl, seeking to send
A brother through college, I hear;
May the angels her deeds of devotion befriend
And crown her endeavor with cheer
More strength to her hands and more warmth to her heart!
May the clouds never darken her sun,
And duty and beauty, in Love’s magic art,
Forever be wedded as one.

She’s only a working girl, Chance has decreed
She must dwell with the lowly on earth;
And yet she is rarer in thought and in deed
Than the queenliest princess of earth.
And I would she might know that her beautiful life,
Though shadowed with want and with care,
Has been, in the midst of my toil and my strife,
A hope and a song and a prayer.

— Nixon Waterman, in L.A.W. Bulletin.

Middletown Daily Argus (Middletown, New York) Feb 14, 1898

Tags: 1898, Beauty, Employment, Poetry, Women, Working Girl