To the Mother
The mother-hands no further toil may know;
The mother-eyes smile not on you and me;
The mother-heart is stilled, alas!—But O
The mother-love abides eternally.
To My Sister — A Belated Offering for Her Birthday
These books you find three weeks behind
Your honored anniversary
Make me, I fear, to here appear
Mayhap a trifle cursory.—
Yet while the Muse must thus refuse
The chords that fall caressfully,
She seems to stir the publisher
And dealer quite successfully.
As to our birthdays—let ’em run
Until they whir and whiz!
Read Robert Louis Stevenson,
And hum these lines of his:—
“The eternal dawn, beyond a doubt,
Shall break on hill and plain
And put all stars and candles out
Ere we be young again.”