And say to mothers what a holy charge
Is theirs--with what a kingly power their love
Might read more

And say to mothers what a holy charge
Is theirs--with what a kingly power their love
Might rule the fountains of the new-born mind.

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of children.

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of children.

At the cross, her station keeping,
Stood the mournful mother, weeping,
Where He hung, the dying Lord.
read more

At the cross, her station keeping,
Stood the mournful mother, weeping,
Where He hung, the dying Lord.
[Lat., Stabat mater, dolorosa
Juxta crucem lacrymosa
Que pendebat Filius.]

They say man rules the universe,
That subject shore and main
Kneel down and bless the empery
read more

They say man rules the universe,
That subject shore and main
Kneel down and bless the empery
Of his majestic reign;
But a sovereign, gentler, mightier,
Man from his throne has hurled,
For the hand that rocks the cradle
Is the hand that rules the world.

That it should come to this,
But two months dead, nay, not so much, not two,
So read more

That it should come to this,
But two months dead, nay, not so much, not two,
So excellent a king, that was to this
Hyperion to a satyr, so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth,
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on, and yet within a month--
Let me not think on't; frailty, thy name is woman--
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father's body
Like Niobe, all tears, why she, even she--
O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourned longer--married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules.

Who ran to help me when I fell,
And would some pretty story tell,
Or kiss the read more

Who ran to help me when I fell,
And would some pretty story tell,
Or kiss the place to make it well/
My mother.

There was a place in childhood that I remember well,
And there a voice of sweetest tone bright fairy read more

There was a place in childhood that I remember well,
And there a voice of sweetest tone bright fairy tales did tell.

The pretty and sweet manner of it forced
Those waters from me which I would have stopped;
read more

The pretty and sweet manner of it forced
Those waters from me which I would have stopped;
But I had not so much of man in me,
And all my mother came into mine eyes
And gave me up to tears.

When a woman is twenty, a child deforms her; when she is thirty, he preserves her; and when forty, he read more

When a woman is twenty, a child deforms her; when she is thirty, he preserves her; and when forty, he makes her young again.