My Mother Dear
There was a place in childhood that I remember well
And there a voice of sweetest tone bright fairy tales did tell,
And gentle words, and fond embrace, were given with joy to me,
When I was in that happy place upon my mother’s knee.
When fairy tales were ended, “Good night,” she softly said,
And kissed, and laid me down to sleep, within my tiny bed,
And holy words she taught me then–methinks I yet can see
Her angel eyes, as close I knelt beside my mother’s knee.
In the sickness of my childhood, the perils of my prime,
The sorrows of my riper years, the cares of ev’ry time,
When doubt and danger weighed me down, then pleading all for me,
It was a fervent prayer to Heaven that bent my mother’s knee.
Samuel Lover
“All that I am or hope to be I owe to my mother.”
Abraham Lincoln
21“(A)Whenever a woman is in labor she has pain, because her hour has come; but when she gives birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy that a child has been born into the world. John 16:21
Tribute to a Mother
Children, look in those eyes, listen to that dear voice, notice the feeling of even a single touch that is bestowed upon you by that gentle hand. Make much of it while yet you have that most precious of all good gifts, a loving mother. Read the unfathomable love of those eyes; the kind anxiety of that tone and look, however slight your pain. In after-life you may have friends, fond dear, kind friends; but never will you have again the inexpressible love and gentleness lavished upon you which none but a mother bestows. Often do I sigh in my struggle with the hard, uncaring world, for the sweet, deep security I felt when, of an, evening, nestling in her bosom, I listened to some quiet tale, suitable to my age, read in her tender and untiring voice. Never can I forget her sweet glances cast upon me when I appeared asleep; never her kiss of peace at night.
Thomas Babington Macaulay