MOTHER AND SON.

Lo amidst London I lift thee,

and how little and light thou art,

And thou without hope or fear

thou fear and hope of my heart!

Lo here thy body beginning,

O son, and thy soul and thy life;

But how will it be if thou livest,

and enterest into the strife,

And in love we dwell together

when the man is grown in thee,

When thy sweet speech I shall hearken,

and yet‘ twixt thee and me

Shall rise that wall of distance,

that round each one doth grow,

And maketh it hard and bitter

each other's thought to know.

Now, therefore, while yet thou art little

and hast no thought of thine own,

I will tell thee a word of the world;

of the hope whence thou hast grown;

Of the love that once begat thee,

of the sorrow that hath made

Thy little heart of hunger,

and thy hands on my bosom laid.

Then mayst thou remember hereafter,

as whiles when people say

All this hath happened before

in the life of another day;

So mayst thou dimly remember

this tale of thy mother's voice,

As oft in the calm of dawning

I have heard the birds rejoice,

As oft I have heard the storm-wind

go moaning through the wood;

And I knew that earth was speaking,

and the mother's voice was good.

Now, to thee alone will I tell it

that thy mother's body is fair,

In the guise of the country maidens

Who play with the sun and the air;

Who have stood in the row of the reapers

in the August afternoon,

Who have sat by the frozen water

in the high day of the moon,

When the lights of the Christmas feasting

were dead in the house on the hill,

And the wild geese gone to the salt-marsh

had left the winter still.

Yea, I am fair, my firstling;

if thou couldst but remember me!

The hair that thy small hand clutcheth

is a goodly sight to see;

I am true, but my face is a snare;

soft and deep are my eyes,

And they seem for men's beguiling

fulfilled with the dreams of the wise.

Kind are my lips, and they look

as though my soul had learned

Deep things I have never heard of,

my face and my hands are burned

By the lovely sun of the acres;

three months of London town

And thy birth-bed have bleached them indeed,

“But lo, where the edge of the gown”

( So said thy father ) “is parting

the wrist that is white as the curd

From the brown of the hand that I love,

bright as the wing of a bird.”

Such is thy mother, O firstling,

yet strong as the maidens of old,

Whose spears and whose swords were the warders

of homestead, of field and of fold.

Oft were my feet on the highway,

often they wearied the grass;

From dusk unto dusk of the summer

three times in a week would I pass

To the downs from the house on the river

through the waves of the blossoming corn.

Fair then I lay down in the even,

and fresh I arose on the morn,

And scarce in the noon was I weary.

Ah, son, in the days of thy strife,

If thy soul could but harbour a dream

of the blossom of my life!

It would be as the sunlit meadows

beheld from a tossing sea,

And thy soul should look on a vision

of the peace that is to be.