Classic and Contemporary Poetry
TO MY MOTHER, by PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Like streamlets to a silent sea Last Line: Lo! Now, I bring -- my latest! Subject(s): Mothers | ||||||||
LIKE streamlets to a silent sea, These songs with varied motion Flow from bright fancy's uplands free, To Lethe's clouded ocean; They lapse in deepening music down The slopes of flower-lit meadows, Nor dream, poor songs! how near them frown Oblivion's rayless shadows! Yet though of brief and dubious life, All wed to incompleteness, -- The voices of these lays are rife With frail and fleeting sweetness; One chord to make more full the strain, One note I may not smother, Is echoed in the heart's refrain Which holds thy name, my mother! To thee my earliest verse I brought, All wreathed in loves and roses, Some glowing boyish fancy, fraught With tender May-wind closes; Thou did'st not taunt my fledgling song, Nor view its flight with scorning: "The bird," thou saidst, "grown fleet and strong, Might yet outsoar the morning!" Ah me! between that hour and this, Eternities seem flowing; O'er hapless graves of youth and bliss Dark cypress boughs are growing; Our Fate hath dimmed with base alloy The rich, pure gold of pleasure, And changed the choral chant of joy To care's heart-broken measure! But through it all, -- the blight, the pall, The stress of thunderous weather, That God who keeps wild chance in thrall Hath linked our lots together; So, hand in hand, we sail the gloom, Faith's mystic plummet casting To sound the ways which end in bloom Of Edens everlasting! I bless thee, Dear, with reverent thought! Pale face, and tresses hoary, Whose every silvery thread hath caught Some hint of heavenly glory; -- To thee, with trust assured, sublime, Death's angel-call that waitest, To thee, as once my earliest rhyme, Lo! now, I bring -- my latest! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MY MOTHER'S HANDS by ANDREW HUDGINS CONTINENT'S END by ROBINSON JEFFERS IN THE 25TH YEAR OF MY MOTHER'S DEATH by JUDY JORDAN THE PAIDLIN' WEAN by ALEXANDER ANDERSON BLASTING FROM HEAVEN by PHILIP LEVINE A STORM IN THE DISTANCE (AMONG THE GEORGIAN HILLS) by PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE |
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