Poems on Mother

Motherless baby and babyless mother,
Bring them together to love one another.

by Christina Georgina Rossetti.

If Nature smiles - the Mother must
I'm sure, at many a whim
Of Her eccentric Family -
Is She so much to blame?

by Emily Dickinson.

I SEE the sleeping babe, nestling the breast of its mother;
The sleeping mother and babe- hush'd, I study them long and long.

by Walt Whitman.

My baby has a father and a mother,
Rich little baby!
Fatherless, motherless, I know another
Forlorn as may be:
Poor little baby!

by Christina Georgina Rossetti.

You too, my mother, read my rhymes
For love of unforgotten times,
And you may chance to hear once more
The little feet along the floor.

by Robert Louis Stevenson.

To-day's your natal day,
Sweet flowers I bring;
Mother, accept, I pray,
My offering.

And may you happy live,
And long us bless;
Receiving as you give
Great happiness.

by Christina Georgina Rossetti.

Mother, to whose valiant will
Battling long ago,
What the heaping years fulfil,
Light and song, I owe;
Send my little book afield,
Fronting praise or blame
With the shining flag and shield
Of your name.

by Archibald Lampman.

Mother shake the cherry-tree,
Susan catch a cherry;
Oh how funny that will be,
Let's be merry!
One for brother, one for sister,
Two for mother more,
Six for father, hot and tired,
Knocking at the door.

by Christina Georgina Rossetti.

Adieu madam et ma mastres.
Adieu mon solas et mon Joy.
Adieu iusque vous reuoye,
Adieu vous diz per graunt tristesse.

Adew, madam, and my mystresse,
Adew, my sollace and my ioye!
Adew untyll agayne I see yow,
Adew I saye ouercom by sadnesse.

by Henry VIII, King of England.

Farewell, dear Heart! Since needs it must I go,
Dear Heart, farewell!
Fain would I stay, but that I love thee so.
One kiss, ma Belle!
What hope lies in the Land we do not know,
Who, Dear, can tell?
But thee I love, and let thy 'plaint be, ‘Lo,
He loved me well!’

by Coventry Patmore.

164

Mama never forgets her birds,
Though in another tree—
She looks down just as often
And just as tenderly
As when her little mortal nest
With cunning care she wove—
If either of her "sparrows fall,"
She "notices," above.

by Emily Dickinson.

One wept whose only child was dead,
New-born, ten years ago.
"Weep not; he is in bliss," they said.
She answered, "Even so,

"Ten years ago was born in pain
A child, not now forlorn.
But oh, ten years ago, in vain,
A mother, a mother was born."

by Alice Meynell.

The Mother to her brooding breast
Her shrouded baby closely holds,
A stationary shadow, drest
In shadow, falling folds on folds.

With gesture motionless as Night
She stands; through wavering glare and sound
Deep pierces like a sombre light
The full gloom of her gaze profound.

by Robert Laurence Binyon.

'MOTHER! Mother!' he called as he fell
In the horror there
Of a bursting shell
That strewed red flesh on the air.
Far away over sea and land:
The knitting dropt
From an old white hand,
And a heart for an instant stopt.
But it was Death, dark mother and wise,
All-tenderest,
Who kissed his eyes
And gathered him to her breast.

by Katharine Lee Bates.

She was so little—little in her grave,
The wide earth all around so hard and cold—
She was so little! therefore did I crave
My arms might still her tender form enfold.
She was so little, and her cry so weak
When she among the heavenly children came—
She was so little—I alone might speak
For her who knew no word nor her own name.

by Edith Matilda Thomas.

Ah, woe is me, my mother dear!
A man of strife ye've born me:
For sair contention I maun bear;
They hate, revile, and scorn me.

I ne'er could lend on bill or band,
That five per cent. might blest me;
And borrowing, on the tither hand,
The deil a ane wad trust me.

Yet I, a coin-denied wight,
By Fortune quite discarded;
Ye see how I am, day and night,
By lad and lass blackguarded!

by Robert Burns.

I RISE in the dawn, and I kneel and blow
Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow;
And then I must scrub and bake and sweep
Till stars are beginning to blink and peep;
And the young lie long and dream in their bed
Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head,
And their ~y goes over in idleness,
And they sigh if the wind but lift a tress:
While I must work because I am old,
And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.

by William Butler Yeats.

If I were hanged on the highest hill,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
I know whose love would follow me still,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!

If I were drowned in the deepest sea,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
I know whose tears would come down to me,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!

If I were damned of body and soul,
I know whose prayers would make me whole,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!

by Rudyard Kipling.

One night a tiny dewdrop fell
Into the bosom of a rose,--
"Dear little one, I love thee well,
Be ever here thy sweet repose!"

Seeing the rose with love bedight,
The envious sky frowned dark, and then
Sent forth a messenger of light
And caught the dewdrop up again.

"Oh, give me back my heavenly child,--
My love!" the rose in anguish cried;
Alas! the sky triumphant smiled,
And so the flower, heart-broken, died.

by Eugene Field.

True heart and wise, that with Love's key
Didst open all life's mystery
And buy life's treasure at the price
Of Love's perpetual sacrifice!

The peace that Love finds hid in care;
The strength that love-borne burdens bear;
The hope that stands with love and faith
Serenely facing life and death;

The blessing that in blessing lies-
These didst thou know, true heart and wise!
Now God hath added, last and best,
The sudden, glad surprise of rest!

by Rossiter Worthington Raymond.

LONG years ago she visited my chamber,
Steps soft and slow, a taper in her hand;
Her fond kiss she laid upon my eyelids,
Fair as an angel from the unknown land:
Mother, mother, is it thou I see?
Mother, mother, watching over me.

And yesternight I saw her cross my chamber,
Soundless as light, a palm-branch in her hand;
Her mild eyes she bent upon my anguish,
Calm as an angel from the blessed land;
Mother, mother, is it thou I see?
Mother, mother, art thou come for me?

by Dinah Maria Mulock Craik.

Sil.

O Cupid ! Monarch ouer Kings,
Wherefore hast thou feete and wings?
It is to shew how swift thou art,
When thou wound'st a tender heart:
Thy wings being clip'd, and feete held still,
Thy Bow so many could not kill.

Acc.

It is all one in Venus wanton schoole,
Who highest sits, the wise man or the foole:
Fooles in loues colledge
Haue farre more knowledge,
To reade a woman ouer,
Than a neate prating louer.
Nay, tis confest,
That fooles please women best.

by John Lyly.

I

Fleck of sky you are,
Dropped through branches dark,
O my little one, mine!
Promise of the star,
Outpour of the lark;
Beam and song divine.

II

See this precious gift,
Steeping in new birth
All my being, for sign
Earth to heaven can lift,
Heaven descend on earth,
Both in one be mine!

III

Life in light you glass
When you peep and coo,
You, my little one, mine!
Brooklet chirps to grass,
Daisy looks in dew
Up to dear sunshine.

by George Meredith.

DEAD! my wayward boy--_my own_--
Not _the Law's!_ but _mine_--the good
God's free gift to me alone,
Sanctified by motherhood.

'Bad,' you say: Well, who is not?
'Brutal'--'with a heart of stone'--
And 'red-handed.'--Ah! the hot
Blood upon your own!

I come not, with downward eyes,
To plead for him shamedly,--
God did not apologize
When He gave the boy to me.

Simply, I make ready now
For _His_ verdict.--_You_ prepare--
You have killed us both--and how
Will you face us There!

by James Whitcomb Riley.

Behold, dear Mother, who was late our Fear,
Disarm'd and Harmless, I present you here;
The Tongue ty'd up, that made all Jury quake,
And which so often did our Greatness shake;

No Terror sits upon his Awful Brow,
Where Fierceness reign'd, there Calmness triumphs now;
As Lovers use, he gazes on my Face,
With Eyes that languish, as they sued for Grace;
Wholly subdu'd by my Victorious Charms,
See how his Head reposes in my Arms.
Come, joyn then with me in my just Transport,
Who thus have brought the Hermite to the Court.

by Anne Killigrew.

THE threefold terror of love; a fallen flare
Through the hollow of an ear;
Wings beating about the room;
The terror of all terrors that I bore
The Heavens in my womb.
Had I not found content among the shows
Every common woman knows,
Chimney corner, garden walk,
Or rocky cistern where we tread the clothes
And gather all the talk?
What is this flesh I purchased with my pains,
This fallen star my milk sustains,
This love that makes my heart's blood stop
Or strikes a Sudden chill into my bones
And bids my hair stand up?

by William Butler Yeats.

A worthy Matron of unspotted life,
A loving Mother and obedient wife,
A friendly Neighbor, pitiful to poor,
Whom oft she fed, and clothed with her store;
To Servants wisely aweful, but yet kind,
And as they did, so they reward did find:
A true Instructer of her Family,
The which she ordered with dexterity.
The publick meetings ever did frequent,
And in her Closet constant hours she spent;
Religious in all her words and wayes,
Preparing still for death, till end of dayes:
Of all her Children, Children, liv'd to see,
Then dying, left a blessed memory.

by Anne Bradstreet.

Being his mother--when he goes away
I would not hold him overlong, and so
Sometimes my yielding sight of him grows O
So quick of tears, I joy he did not stay
To catch the faintest rumor of them! Nay,
Leave always his eyes clear and glad, although
Mine own, dear Lord, do fill to overflow;
Let his remembered features, as I pray,
Smile ever on me! Ah! what stress of love
Thou givest me to guard with Thee thiswise:
Its fullest speech ever to be denied
Mine own--being his mother! All thereof
Thou knowest only, looking from the skies
As when not Christ alone was crucified.

by James Whitcomb Riley.

Eternities before the first-born day,
Or ere the first sun fledged his wings of flame,
Calm Night, the everlasting and the same,
A brooding mother over chaos lay.
And whirling suns shall blaze and then decay,
Shall run their fiery courses and then claim
The haven of the darkness whence they came;
Back to Nirvanic peace shall grope their way.

So when my feeble sun of life burns out,
And sounded is the hour for my long sleep,
I shall, full weary of the feverish light,
Welcome the darkness without fear or doubt,
And heavy-lidded, I shall softly creep
Into the quiet bosom of the Night.

by James Weldon Johnson.

Once more the Christian festival is near,
And I, for whom each day repeats all days
Continuously in ecstasy of praise,
Love's birthday lasting through the unending year,
Am dreaming how the spirit draws me sheer
From farthest wandering in the illusive maze
To that white centre whose creative blaze
Spun me aloft and sets me tremulous here.
And since all heaven is figured in my heart,
As in a dewdrop ere it change and live
There shines the glory of the eternal dome,
Mother, to you the showering meteors dart
Of free affection, fancies fugitive,
And flare, with increasing heat and splendour, home.

by John Le Gay Brereton.

AT thy approach, oh, sweet bewitching May!
Through ev'ry wood soft melodies resound;
On silken wings Favonian breezes play,
And scatter bloom and fragrance all around!

Yet not for these I hail thy gentle reign,
And rove enchanted through thy fairy bow'rs;
Not for thy warbled songs, thy zephyr-train,
Nor all the incense of thy glowing flow'rs.

For this to thee I pour the artless lay,
Oh, lovely May! thou goddess of the grove!
With thee returns the smiling natal day,
Of her, who claims my fond, my filial love!
Bright as thy sun-beams may it still appear,
Calm as thy skies, unclouded with a tear!

by Felicia Dorothea Hemans.

From out the front of being, undefiled,
A life hath been upheaved with struggle and pain;
Safe in her arms a mother holds again
That dearest miracle--a new-born child.
To moans of anguish terrible and wild--
As shrieks the night-wind through an ill-shut pane--
Pure heaven succeeds; and after fiery strain
Victorious woman smiles serenely mild.

Yea, shall she not rejoice, shall not her frame
Thrill with a mystic rapture! At this birth,
The soul now kindled by her vital flame
May it not prove a gift of priceless worth?
Some saviour of his kind whose starry fame
Shall bring a brightness to the darkened earth.

by Mathilde Blind.

Not more removed with the long years’increase,
Through hours when storms upon thy roof of clay
Have beat, or when the blossom of the May
Has to the fettered winter smiled release, -
Not from my heart one thought of thee could cease,
O loved and mourned to-day as on that day
When from my sight thy presence passed away,
Thou spirit of all gentleness and peace.
Nay, in the long, long ways I walk alone,
Still with me! On my brow thy touch is laid
Softly, - when all to great my burden grown . . .
And I shall go, serenly, unafraid,
Into the dark-well knowing what dear tone-
Whose hand to mine- O thou beloved shade!

by Ina D. Coolbrith.

His mother dear Cupid offended late,
Because that Mars grown slacker in her love,
With pricking shot he did not throughly more
To keep the pace of their first loving state.

The boy refus'd for fear of Mars's hate,
Who threaten'd stripes, if he his wrath did prove:
But she in chafe him from her lap did shove,
Brake bow, brake shafts, while Cupid weeping sate:

Till that his grandame Nature pityijng it
Of stella's brows make him two better bows,
And in her eyes of arrows infinite.

Oh how for joy he leaps, oh how he crows,
And straight therewith like wags new got to play,
Falls to shrewd turns, and I was in his way.

by Sir Philip Sidney.

HOW sweet it is, when mother Fancy rocks
The wayward brain, to saunter through a wood!
An old place, full of many a lovely brood,
Tall trees, green arbours, and ground-flowers in flocks;
And wild rose tip-toe upon hawthorn stocks,
Like a bold Girl, who plays her agile pranks
At Wakes and Fairs with wandering Mountebanks,--
When she stands cresting the Clown's head, and mocks
The crowd beneath her. Verily I think,
Such place to me is sometimes like a dream
Or map of the whole world: thoughts, link by link,
Enter through ears and eyesight, with such gleam
Of all things, that at last in fear I shrink,
And leap at once from the delicious stream.

by William Wordsworth.

AS at thy portals also death,
Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds,
To memories of my mother, to the divine blending, maternity,
To her, buried and gone, yet buried not, gone not from me,
(I see again the calm benignant face fresh and beautiful still,
I sit by the form in the coffin,
I kiss and kiss convulsively again the sweet old lips, the cheeks,
the closed eyes in the coffin;)
To her, the ideal woman, practical, spiritual, of all of earth, life,
love, to me the best,
I grave a monumental line, before I go, amid these songs,
And set a tombstone here. 10

by Walt Whitman.

Because I feel that, in the Heavens above,
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of "Mother,"
Therefore by that dear name I long have called you-
You who are more than mother unto me,
And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you
In setting my Virginia's spirit free.
My mother- my own mother, who died early,
Was but the mother of myself; but you
Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,
And thus are dearer than the mother I knew
By that infinity with which my wife
Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.

by Edgar Allan Poe.

WHITE little hands!
Pink little feet!
Dimpled all over,
Sweet, sweet, sweet!
What dost thou wail for?
The unknown? the unseen?
The ills that are coming,
The joys that have been?

Cling to me closer,
Closer and closer,
Till the pain that is purer
Hath banish’d the grosser.
Drain, drain at the stream, love,
Thy hunger is freeing,
That was born in a dream, love,
Along with thy being!

Little fingers that feel
For their home on my breast,
Little lips that appeal
For their nurture, their rest!
Why, why dost thou weep, dear?
Nay, stifle thy cries,
Till the dew of thy sleep, dear,
Lies soft on thine eyes.

by Alfred Austin.

Nature, the gentlest mother,
Impatient of no child,
The feeblest or the waywardest,
Her admonition mild

In forest and the hill
By traveller is heard,
Restraining rampant squirrel
Or too impetuous bird.

How fair her conversation,
A summer afternoon,--
Her household, her assembly;
And when the sun goes down

Her voice among the aisles
Incites the timid prayer
Of the minutest cricket,
The most unworthy flower.

When all the children sleep
She turns as long away
As will suffice to light her lamps;
Then, bending from the sky

With infinite affection
And infiniter care,
Her golden finger on her lip,
Wills silence everywhere.

by Emily Dickinson.

Nature the gentlest mother is,
Impatient of no child,
The feeblest of the waywardest.
Her admonition mild

In forest and the hill
By traveller be heard,
Restraining rampant squirrel
Or too impetuous bird.

How fair her conversation
A summer afternoon,
Her household her assembly;
And when the sun go down,

Her voice among the aisles
Incite the timid prayer
Of the minutest cricket,
The most unworthy flower.

When all the children sleep,
She turns as long away
As will suffice tolight her lamps,
Then bending from the sky

With infinite affection
An infiniter care,
Her golden finger on her lip,
Wills silence everywhere.

by Emily Dickinson.