Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE ODE OF PERFECT YEARS: 2. MOTHERHOOD, by LEWIS MORRIS (1833-1907)


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE ODE OF PERFECT YEARS: 2. MOTHERHOOD, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: But here is one who over all the earth
Last Line: Best dream of early youth, best memory of age!
Subject(s): Mothers


But here is one who over all the earth
Is worshipped and is blest,
Who doth rejoice from holier springs of mirth,
And sorrow from a deeper fount of tears,
On whose sweet bosom is our earliest rest,
Whose tender voice that cheers
Is our first memory, which still doth last
Thro' all our later past --
The love of love or child, the world-worn strife,
The turmoil and the triumphs of a life --
The sweet maid - mother, pure and mild,
The deep love undefiled.

Thou art the universal praise
Of every human heart, the secret shrine
Where seer and savage keep a dream divine
Through growing and declining days;
And but for thee
And thy unselfish love, thy sacrifice,
Which brings heaven daily nearer to our eyes,
Men whom the rude world stains, men chilled by doubt,
Would find no ray of Deity
To fire a Faith gone out.

Our life from a twofold root
Springs upwards to the sky,
One, surface only, shared with tree and brute,
And one, as deep and strong as heaven is high.
Spirit and sense,
Each bears its part and dwells in innocence
Yet only grown together can they bear
The one consummate fruit.
The flower is good, the flower is fair,
But holds no lasting sweetness in its petals thin,
No seed of life within.
But the ripe fruit within its orbed gold
Doth hidden secrets hold;
Within its honied wells set safe and deep,
The Future lies asleep.
Of shamefastness our being is born,
Of shamefastness and scorn.

Oh, wonder, that so high dost soar!
Oh, vision, blest for evermore!
With every throe of birth
Two glorious Presences make glad the earth
The stainless mother and the Eternal Child.
Of the heart comes love, of the heart and not the brain;
To heights where Thought comes not can Love attain:
We cannot tell at all, we may not know,
How to such stature high our lower natures grow;
What strong instinctive thrill
The mother's being doth fill,
And raises it from miry common ways,
Up to such heights of love.
We cannot tell what blessed forces move,
And so transform the careless girlish heart
To bear so high a part.
We cannot tell; we can but praise.

Fair motherhood, by every childish tongue
Thy eulogy is sung.
In every passing age
The theme of seer and sage:
The painters saw thee in a life-long dream;
The painters who have left a world more fair
Than ever days of nymph and goddess were --
Blest company, who now for centuries
Have fixed the virgin mother for our eyes --
The painters saw thee sitting brown or fair,
Under the Tuscan vines or colder Northern air;
They saw pure love transform thy peasant gaze;
They saw thy reverent eyes, thy young amaze
And left thee Queen of Heaven, wearing a crown
Of glory; and abased at thy sweet breast,
Spurning his robes of kingship down,
The God-child laid at rest.

They found thee, and they fixed thee for our eyes;
But every day that goes
Before the gazer new Madonnas rise.
What matter if the cheek show not the rose,
Nor look divine is there nor queenly grace?
The mother's glory lights the homely face.
In every land beneath the circling sun
Thy praise is never done.
Whatever men may doubt, they put their trust in thee;
Rude souls and coarse, to whom virginity
Seems a dead thing and cold.
So always was it from the days of old;
So shall it be while yet our race doth last;
Though truth be sought no more and faith be past,
Still, till all hope of heaven be dead,
Thy praises shall be said.

Aye, thou art ours, or wert, ere yet
The loss we ne'er forget,
The loss which comes to all who reach life's middle way.
We see thee by the childish bed
Sit patient all night long,
To cool the parching lips or throbbing head;
We hear thee still with simple song
Or sweet hymn lull the wakeful eyes to sleep;
Through every turning of life's chequered page,
Joying with those who joy, weeping with those who weep.
Oh, sainted love! oh, precious sacrifice!
Oh, heaven-lighted eyes!
Best dream of early youth, best memory of age!





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