A kind of gentle wizardry,
As still your flowers statelier grow
And with a richer color glow
Each summer, and perfume the air
More sweetly from each gay parterre.
Ah, I recall the city plot
That was your scanty garden spot
In other years, and yet your care
Made e'en those narrow beds to bear
The narrower flinty walks between,
Such wealth of red and white and green
That prouder gardens might have sighed,
Grown pale through envy, and so, died.
But now you hold your gentle sway
O'er a domain as broad as they,
Where you may tend with tranquil mind
The seeds and shoots and bulbs consigned
Each season to the garden soil,
Till, reared by you with patient toil,
At length in flaunting rows they stand
And keep the order you have planned,
The low before, the tall behind,
Their colors mingled and combined,
Gay household troops in order drawn
As for review upon the lawn,
While you the colonel seem to me
Of summer's splendid soldiery.
Each morn I see you as you pass
Before them o'er the dewy grass,
Their files inspecting, while your eye
Scans all with sharpest scrutiny.
For you in all else mild, are yet
In this one thing a martinet.
And woe to that gay grenadier
Whose cap of crimson shall appear
One shade less bright,- however tall,
His head into your ark must fall.
Not Prussian Frederick did school
His soldiers with such iron rule.
And yet they love you; see, how mute,
They greet you with a loud salute.
From every slender trump and bell
A martial music seems to swell,
Which, though 'tis lost to our dull ear.
I think your finer sense doth hear,
For you with music pass such hours
As are not given to your flow'rs,
Till blossoms spring among the keys,
And garden beds are symphonies.
THE PAGEANT AND OTHER POEMS
BY CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI, 1899
Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome
Has many sonnets: so here now shall be
One sonnet more, a love sonnet, from me
To her whose heart is my heart's quiet home,
To my first Love, my Mother, on whose knee
I learnt love-lore that is not troublesome;
Whose service is my special dignity,
And she my lodestar while I go and come.
And so because you love me, and because
I love you, Mother, I have woven a wreath
Of rhymes wherewith to crown your honored
In you not fourscore years can dim the flame Of love, whose blessed glow transcends the laws Of time and change and mortal life and death.
IN PRAISE OF LEAVES
BY LILIAN SHUMAN DREYFUS, 1906
TO MY MOTHER, HETTIE LANG SHUMAN Stumbling, we see the future as a cup
Which she no longer stores with bread and wine, And where our human longing, yours and mine, Is all the incense we may offer up.
BY EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN
She seemed an angel to our infant eyes!
Once, when the glorifying moon revealed
Her who at evening by our pillow kneeled —
Soft-voiced and golden-haired, from holy skies
Flown to her loves on wings of Paradise-
We looked to see the pinions half-concealed.
The Tuscan vines and olives will not yield
Her back to me, who loved her in this wise,
And since have little known her, but have grown
To see another mother, tenderly,
Watch over sleeping darlings of her own;
Perchance the years have changed her: yet alone
This picture lingers: still she seems to me
The fair, young Angel of my infancy.
TO MY MOTHER
BY THOMAS MOORE
They tell us of an Indian tree
Which howsoe'er the sun and sky
May tempt its boughs to wander free,
And shoot and blossom, wide and high,
Far better loves to bend its arms
Downward again to that dear earth
From which the life, that fills and warms
Its grateful being, first had birth.
'Tis thus, though wooed by flattering friends,
And fed with fame (if fame it be),
This heart, my own dear mother, bends,
With love's true instinct, back to thee!
BY GEORGE BANCROFT GRIFFITH
If you have a gray-haired mother
In the old home far away,
Sit you down and write the letter
You put off from day to day.
Don't wait until her weary steps
Reach Heaven's pearly gate,
But show her that you think of her,
Before it is too late.
If you have a tender message,
Or a loving word to say,
Don't wait till you forget it,
But whisper it to-day.
Who knows what bitter memories
May haunt you if you wait?
So make your loved one happy
Before it is too late.
The tender word unspoken,
The letters never sent,
The long forgotten messages,
The wealth of love unspent ;
For these some hearts are breaking,
For these some loved ones wait;
Show them that you care for them
Before it is too late.
Who fed me from her gentle breast,
And hushed me in her arms to rest,
And on my cheek sweet kisses pressed?
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