Find utterance in her beauty. That fair head
Bows over all earth's graves. It was her cry
Men heard in Rama when the twisted ways
With children's blood ran red!

Her silence utters all the sea would sigh;

And, in her face, the whole earth's anguish prays.

It is the pity, the pity of human love

That strains her face, upturned to meet the doom, And her deep bosom, like a snow-white dove Frozen upon its nest, ne'er to resume

Its happy breathing o'er the golden brace

Whose fostering was her death. Death, death alone Can break the anguished horror of that spell!

The sorrow on her face

Is sealed: the living flesh is turned to stone;
She knows all, all, that Life and Time can tell.

Ah, yet, her woman's love, so vast, so tender;
Her woman's body, hurt by every dart;
Braving the thunder, still, still hide the slender
Soft frightened child beneath her mighty heart!
She is all one mute immortal cry, one brief

Infinite pang of such victorious pain

That she transcends the heavens and bows them down!

The majesty of grief

Is hers, and her dominion must remain

Eternal. God nor man usurps that crown.

* From "The Golden Hynde," published by The Macmillan Company.

THE MOTHER

TRANSLATED FROM THE CHINESE BY GEORGE BARROW

From out the South the genial breezes sigh,
They shake the bramble branches to and fro
Whose lovely green delights the gazer's eye:
A mother's thoughts are troubled even so.

From out the South the genial breezes move,
They shake the branches of the bramble tree:
Unless the sons fair men and honest prove,
The virtuous mother will dishonored be.

The frigid fount with violence and spray
By Shiyoun's town upcasts its watery store:
Though full seven sons she gave to life and day,
The mother's heart is but disturbed the more.

When sings the redbreast, it is bliss to hear,
The dulcet notes the little songster breeds;
But ah! more blissful to a mother's ear,
The fair report of seven good children's deeds.

A MOTHER'S LOVE HOME

BY ALBERT Barnes

Many of us - most of us who are advanced beyond the period of childhood went out from that home to embark on the stormy sea of life. Of the feelings of a father, and of his interest in our welfare, we have

never entertained a doubt, and our home was dear because he was there; but there was a peculiarity in the feeling that it was the home of our mother. While she lived there, there was a place that we felt was home. There was one place where we would always be welcome, one place where we would be met with a smile, one place where we would be sure of a friend. The world might be indifferent to us. We might be unsuccessful in our studies or our business. The new friends which we supposed we had might prove to be false. The honor which we thought we deserved might be withheld from us. We might be chagrined and mortified by seeing a rival outstrip us, and bear away the prize which we sought. But there was a place where no feelings of rivalry were found, and where those whom the world overlooked would be sure of a friendly greeting. Whether pale or wan by study, care, or sickness, or flushed with health and flattering success, we were sure we should be welcomed there. Though the world was cold towards us, yet there was one who always rejoiced in our success, and always was affected by our reverses; and there was a place to which we might go back from the storm which began to pelt us, where we might rest, and become encouraged and invigorated for a new conflict. So I have seen a bird in its first efforts to fly, leave its nest, and stretch its wings, and go forth to the wide world. But the wind blew it back, and the rain began to fall, and the darkness of night began to draw on, and there was no shelter abroad, and it sought its way back to its nest, to take shelter beneath its mother's

wings, and be refreshed for the struggles of a new day; but then it flew away to think of its nest and its mother no more. But not thus did we leave our home when we bade adieu to it to go forth alone to the manly duties of life. Even amidst the storms that then beat upon us, and the disappointments that we met with, and the coldness of the world, we felt still that there was one there who sympathized in our troubles, as well as rejoiced in our success, and that, whatever might be abroad, when we entered her dwelling we should be met with a smile. We expected that a mother, like the mother of Sisera, as she "looked out at her window," waiting for the coming of her son laden with the spoils of victory, would look out for our coming, and that our return would renew her joy and ours in our earlier days.

It makes a sad desolation when from such a place a mother is taken away, and when, whatever may be the sorrows or the successes in life, she is to greet the returning son or daughter no more. The home of our childhood may be still lovely. The old family mansion the green fields - the running stream — the moss-covered well the trees the lawn the rose -the sweet briar-may be there. Perchance, too, there may be an aged father, with venerable locks, sitting in his loneliness, with everything to command respect and love; but she is not there. Her familiar voice is not heard. The mother has been borne forth to sleep by the side of her children who went before her, and the place is not what it was. There may be those there whom we much love, but she is not there.

We may have formed new relations in life, tender and strong as they can be; we may have another home, dear to us as was the home of our childhood, where there is all in affection, kindness, and religion, to make us happy, but that home is not what it was, and it never will be what it was again. It is a loosening of one of the cords which bound us to earth, designed to prepare us for our eternal flight from everything dear here below, and to teach us that there is no place here that is to be our permanent home.

THE SONG OF THE OLD MOTHER *

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and I 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;
But the young lie long and dream in their bed
Of matching of ribbons, the blue and the red,
And their day goes over in idleness,
And they sigh if the wind but lift up a tress;
While I must work, because I am old

And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.

* From "The Victorian Anthology."

MOTHER AND POET

BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.