Edmund Wilson, Jr.

REMEMBERING the flowers my mother’s hand uncloses

Between her hedges spread with spiders’ laces—

Narcissi pale and straight like April’s rain,

The peony’s deep stain,

Pansies with kittens’ faces

And summer roses,

Whose yellow lingers from the summer dawn—

Remembering how she loves the rabbits on the lawn:

The barren desks and empty offices

Where nothing wise is done

Had nearly slipped my mind,

With all the deaf, the tongueless and the blind,

Whose works and pupils thrive beneath the sun,

Unlovely and unkind.