The Song My Mother Sings
SWEET unto my heart is the song my mother sings
As eventide is brooding on its dark and noiseless wings;
Every note is charged with memory–every memory bright with rays
Of the golden hours of promise in the lap of childhood's days;
The orchard blooms anew and each blossom scents the way,
And I feel again the breath of eve among the new-mown hay;
While through the halls of memory in happy notes there rings
All the life-joy of the past in the song my mother sings.
I have listened to the dreamy notes of Chopin and of Liszt,
As they dripped and drooped about my heart and filled my eyes with mist;
I have wept strong tears of pathos 'neath the spell of Verdi's power,
As I heard the tenor voice of grief from out the donjon tower;
And Gounod's oratorios are full of notes sublime
That stir the heart with rapture through the sacred pulse of time;
But all the music of the past and the wealth that memory brings
Seem as nothing when I listen to the song my mother sings.
It's a song of love and triumph, it's a song of toil and care;
It is filled with chords of pathos and it's set in notes of prayer;
It is bright with dreams and visions of the days that are to be,
And as strong in faith's devotion as the heart-beat of the sea;
It is linked in mystic measure to sweet voices from above,
And is starred with ripest blessing through a mother's sacred love;
Oh, sweet and strong and tender are the memories that it brings,
As I list in joy and rapture to the song my mother sings.
The Dance At Mcdougall's
IN a little log house near the rim of the forest
With its windows of sunlight, its threshold of stone,
Lived Donald McDougall, the quaintest of Scotchmen,
And Janet his wife, in their shanty, alone:
By day the birds sang them a chorus of welcome,
At night they saw Scotland again in their dreams;
They toiled full of hope 'mid the sunshine of friendship,
Their hearts leaping onward like troutlets in streams,
In the little log home of McDougall's.
At evening the boys and the girls would all gather
To dance and to court 'neath McDougall's rooftree;
They were wild as the tide that rushes up Solway
When lashed by the tempests that sweep the dark sea:
There Malcolm and Flora and Angus and Katie
With laughter-timed paces came tripping along,
And Pat, whose gay heart had been nursed in Old Erin,
Would link each Scotch reel with a good Irish song,
Down at the dance at McDougall's.
For the night was as day at McDougall's log shanty,
The blaze on the hearth shed its halo around,
While the feet that tripped lightly the reel 'Tullagorum,'
Pattered each measure with 'ooch!' and with bound;
No 'Lancers' nor 'Jerseys' were danced at McDougall's,
Nor the latest waltz-step found a place on the floor,
But reels and strathspeys and the liveliest hornpipes
Shook the room to its centre from fireplace to door,
In the little log house at McDougall's.
Gone now is the light in McDougall's log shanty,
The blaze on the hearth long has sunk into gloom,
And Donald and Janet who dreamed of 'Auld Scotia'
Are dreaming of Heaven in the dust of the tomb.
While the boys and the girls–the 'balachs' and 'calahs'–
Who toiled during day and danced through the night,
Live again in bright dreams of Memory's morning
When their hearts beat to music of life, love and light,
Down at the dance at McDougall's.
