"It may be Autumn, yea Winter with the woman -- but with the mother, as a mother, it is always Spung." -- SERMON OF THE REV. THOMAS COBBETT, AT LYNN, 1665. I SAW an aged woman bow To weariness and care, Time wrote his sorrows on her brow And 'mid her frosted hair. Hope, from her breast had torn away Its rooting, scathed and dry, And on the pleasures of the gay She turned a joyless eye. What was it that like sunbeam clear O'er her wan features run, As pressing towards her deafened ear I named her absent son? What was it! Ask a mother's breast Through which a fountain flows Perennial, fathomless and blest, By winter never froze. What was it? Ask the King of kings, Who hath decreed, above, That change should mark all earthly things, Except a mother's love. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MAN IN A ROOM by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS MOTHER AND POET; TURIN, AFTER THE NEWS FROM GAETA, 1861 by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING A LITTLE DUTCH GARDEN by HARRIET WHITNEY DURBIN BITTER-SWEET: CRADLE SONG [OR, BABYHOOD] by JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND A BALLAD OF THE BOSTON TEA-PARTY [DECEMBER 16, 1773] by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES A ST. HELENA LULLABY by RUDYARD KIPLING THE SHEPHERD OF KING ADMETUS by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL |