Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Jessie B. Rittenhouse, ed. (1869–1948). The Little Book of Modern Verse. 1917.

Anna Hempstead Branch

Songs for My Mother

MY mother’s hands are cool and fair,

They can do anything.

Delicate mercies hide them there

Like flowers in the spring.

When I was small and could not sleep,

She used to come to me,

And with my cheek upon her hand

How sure my rest would be.

For everything she ever touched

Of beautiful or fine,

Their memories living in her hands

Would warm that sleep of mine.

Her hands remember how they played

One time in meadow streams,—

And all the flickering song and shade

Of water took my dreams.

Swift through her haunted fingers pass

Memories of garden things;—

I dipped my face in flowers and grass

And sounds of hidden wings.

One time she touched the cloud that kissed

Brown pastures bleak and far;—

I leaned my cheek into a mist

And thought I was a star.

All this was very long ago

And I am grown; but yet

The hand that lured my slumber so

I never can forget.

For still when drowsiness comes on

It seems so soft and cool,

Shaped happily beneath my cheek,

Hollow and beautiful.

My mother has the prettiest tricks

Of words and words and words.

Her talk comes out as smooth and sleek

As breasts of singing birds.

She shapes her speech all silver fine

Because she loves it so.

And her own eyes begin to shine

To hear her stories grow.

And if she goes to make a call

Or out to take a walk

We leave our work when she returns

And run to hear her talk.

We had not dreamed these things were so

Of sorrow and of mirth.

Her speech is as a thousand eyes

Through which we see the earth.

God wove a web of loveliness,

Of clouds and stars and birds,

But made not any thing at all

So beautiful as words.

They shine around our simple earth

With golden shadowings,

And every common thing they touch

Is exquisite with wings.

There’s nothing poor and nothing small

But is made fair with them.

They are the hands of living faith

That touch the garment’s hem.

They are as fair as bloom or air,

They shine like any star,

And I am rich who learned from her

How beautiful they are.