Dear Mother, please don’t take away

Dear Mother, please don’t take away my baby.
I’m young, alone, my husband is in jail.
But there’s a wonder in what fortune may be
Given us, though time its wisdom veil.
Please help me be a mother much as you are
By being but a mother once removed,
As I become the daughter that I thus far
Have never been, by love and labor proved.
And let me love as you did my own child,
Making the best of what I wrought in pain;
For once fate leaves, one ought to think it smiled,
Rejoicing in what one would rue in vain.
I would not give my child to another;
I need you now, but only as my mother.