Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE MOTHER, by WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE MOTHER, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Is the nurse gone now? And are we alone at last?
Last Line: The father (joyously): no, no; good-morning, mother.
Alternate Author Name(s): Howells, W. D.
Subject(s): Babies; Fathers; Love - Marital; Mothers; Infants; Wedded Love; Marriage - Love


In the upper chamber of a village house, a young mother lying in bed with her
baby on her arm. A nurse moving silently about the room, opens the door softly,
and goes out. The mother looks up at the father, who stands looking down on her.

The Mother: Is the nurse gone now? And are we alone
At last?
The Father: Yes, dearest, she is gone; and I
Must leave you, too. You must be quiet, now.
[He goes to the door.
You know, you said if they would let you have
The baby you would go to sleep again
Together. [Playfully.] So, now, you must keep your promise!
The Mother: Yes, now I will be quiet. [After a moment:]
Dear!
The Father (turning at the door): Yes, dear?
The Mother: See her, how cunningly she nestles down,
As naturally as if she had been used
To doing it for years. How wise she looks!
[The mother rubs her cheek softly against the baby's head, and then draws
back her face to look at it. The father comes and stands beside the bed, bending
over her and the child.
How much do you suppose she really knows?
The Father: If she has "newly come from heaven, our home,"
As Wordsworth says, then she knows everything
We have forgotten, but shall know again.
When we go back to heaven with her.
The Mother: Yes.
[She rubs her cheek on the baby's head again.
Do you believe it?
The Father: Why, of course I do.
Why, what a—
The Mother: Nothing. Only, I was wishing
That we might all go on forever here.
The Father (laughing and then anxiously): Well, I should not object.
But now, my dear,
If you keep up this talking, I am afraid,
You will excite yourself. The doctor said—
The Mother: Why, I was never calmer in my life!
I feel as if there never could be pain,
Or trouble, or weakness, in the world again.
I am as strong! But, yes, I understand,
And, to please you, I will be quiet now.
[She sighs restfully. The father stoops and kisses her and then the
child.
I wish that you could somehow make one kiss
Do for us both!
The Father: Well, I should like to try,
Sometime, but now—
The Mother: Yes, now I must be quiet.
Go! [He goes toward the door.] Dear!
[He turns again.
The Father: Yes, dearest!
The Mother: But I shall not sleep!
I have been sleeping the whole afternoon.
The Father (anxiously): Yes, yes, but now you ought to sleep again.
You know the doctor told us—
The Mother (impatiently): Oh, the doctor!
Does he expect I'll let him take from me
Any more of this time and give it up
To stupid sleep? Why, I want every instant,
To share it all with you, and keep it ours!
The Father: Yes, love, I know! But now, to keep it ours,
You must do nothing that will make you sick—
The Mother: And die? Oh, yes! But what if I should die?
I have my baby! What if I should die?
The Father (wringing his hands);
Dearest, how can you say such things to me?
The Mother: Well, well! I shall not die. There, go away,
And I will try to sleep. Or no, sit down,
Here by the bed. I will not speak a word.
But it will be more quieting with you
Beside us, than if you were there outside,
Where neither one of us could see you. She
Wants you as much as I.
The Father (doubtfully drawing up a chair, and then sinking into it):
What an idea!
The Mother: Can't you believe, that through each one of us
She feels and wishes for the other one?
Of course she does.
The Father: Perhaps.
The Mother: There's no perhaps.
She'll live her life outside of ours too soon;
And that is why I cannot bear to lose
An instant while she lives it still in ours.
I hate the thought of sleeping.
[She suddenly puts out the hand of the arm underlying the baby's
head and clutches the father's hand.
Where did she
Come from? I do not mean her body or its breath.
That came from us. But oh, her soul, her soul!
Where did that come from?
[The father is silent, and she pulls convulsively at his hand.
Can't you answer me?
The Father (in distress): You know as well as I. Somewhere in space.
Somewhere in God, she was that which might be,
Among the unspeakable infinitude
Of those that dwell there in the mystery.
The Mother (without releasing her hold): Well!
The Father (with a groan): Well, then our love had somehow power upon
her,
And blindly chose her, that she might become
A living soul, and know, feel, think like us.
It chose her, what she shall be to the end.
The Mother (still clutching his hand):
Out of that infinite beatitude,
Where there is nothing of the consciousness
That we call this and that, here, in the world!
That ignorantly suffers and that dies,
After the life-long fear of death, and goes
Helplessly into that unconsciousness
Again!
The Father: She is under the same law as we.
But what the law is, or why it should be,
She knows no less or more than we ourselves.
Why do you make me say such things to you?
The Mother: (musingly, and then flinging his hand away):
I heard a woman say once,—years ago,
When I was a young girl, and long before
We saw each other—that it seemed to her
More like our hate than like our love that brought
The children out of that unconsciousness,
Where if there is no life there is no death.
And if there is no joy there is no pain;
But if it was our love that made them come,
Then nothing but its blindness could excuse it.
The Father: What horrible blasphemy!
The Mother: How can I tell?
There where our baby was, she was so safe!
And if there seemed no care for her in space,
Or any love, as here sometimes there seems
No care or love for us, where we are left
So to ourselves, our baby never knew it!
The Father (in anguish): And are you sorry she has come to us?
You would rather it had been some other life
Summoned to fill up other lives than ours?
You do not care, then, for our little one?
The Mother (solemnly): So much that you cannot imagine it.
I was her life, and now she is my life,
My very life, so that if hers went out
Mine would go out with it in the same breath.
That's how I care.
The Father (beseechingly): Oh, try for her sake, then,
If not for yours or mine, to keep from thinking
These dreadful things!
The Mother: Perhaps I do not think them.
Perhaps the baby thinks them.
The Father: No, I am sure,
She does not!
The Mother: But I thought you liked to have me
Think anything that came into my mind,
No matter what about. You used to seem
Proud of my doing it.
The Father: And so I was,
And so I shall be when you are strong enough
To bear it, and when—
The Mother: And when this miracle
No longer is a miracle? No, now,
I must try now to make the meaning out,
While it is still a miracle to me.
You, if you wish, can drug your thoughts, and sleep;
But my thoughts are so precious that if I
Should lose the least of them—What time is it?
[She follows him keenly, as he takes out his watch.
The Father (with a sigh): Daylight, almost. Hark! You can hear the cocks.
The Mother (Smiling): How sweet it is to hear them crowing so!
It is our own dear earth that seems to speak
In the familiar sound. If it were summer,
The birds would be beginning to sing, now.
I'm glad it is not summer. Is it snowing,
As hard as ever? Look!
The Father (going to the window and peering out): No, it is clear,
And the full moon is shining.
The Mother (lifting her head a little): Let me see!
[With a long sigh, as he draws the curtain:
Yes, it is the moon. The same old moon
We used to walk beneath when we were lovers.
Do you suppose that it was really we?
The Father: If this is we.
[She lets her head drop.
The Mother: It seems a year, almost,
Since yesterday—for now this is tomorrow.
Does the time seem as long to you, I wonder?
The Father (coming back to her): As long as my whole life.
The Mother (taking his hand again): If she could live
Forever on the earth, and we live with her,
I should not fear our having brought her here.
The life of earth, it seems so beautiful,
Far more than anything imaginable
Of any life elsewhere. They cannot hear
Anything like the crowing of the cocks
In heaven—so drowsy and so drowsing! Hark,
How thin and low and faint it is! Oh, sweet,
They keep on calling in their dim, warm barns,
With the kind cattle underneath their roosts,
Munching the hay, and sighing rich and soft.
I used to hear it when I was a child,
And now those things they seem to call me back,
And claim my life a part of theirs again.
I hope that she will live to love such things,
Dear simple things of our ear simple earth.
Do not you, dearest?
The Father: Yes, indeed I do,
And now if only you could go to sleep—
The Mother: Well, I will try. I will be quiet now.
How quietly she sleeps! She wants to set
A good example for her worthless mother.
Mother! Just think of it!
The Father: And father! Think
Of that!
The Mother: Yes, I have thought of that too, dear.
Put your lips down and kiss her little head.
[As the father bends over her:
There, now, with your face between hers and mine,
You can be kissing us both.
[As he lifts himself:
I was just thinking,
What if, instead of our blind, ignorant love,
Choosing her out of the infinitude
Of those unconsciousnesses, as we call them,
She in the wisdom she had right from God,
Had chosen us—in spite of knowing us
Better than we can ever know ourselves,
In all our wickedness and foolishness—
To be her father and her mother here,
Because she understood the good that she
Could do us, and be safe from harm of us:
Would you like that?
The Father: Far better than to think
She came because we ignorantly willed.
The Mother: Well, now, perhaps, that is the way it was,
Only—
The Father: What, dearest?
The Mother: Oh, I do not know
If I can make you understand. Men cannot.
It was not only wishing first to see her,
And willing not to die till I had seen her,
That helped me live through all that agony.
But in the very midst and worst of it
There was a kind of—I can never express it—
Waiting and expectation of a message!
What will her message be?
The Father: Something, perhaps,
That never can be put in words, on earth,
But that we still shall feel the meaning of,
And at the last shall come to understand
As we have always felt it.
The Mother: (absently): That will be
The way, no doubt. [After a moment:] But there was something—as
if—
I wish that I could tell you, through it all—
It were I passing into another world,
Where I had never been before. And this,
This is the other world!
The Father: I do not understand.
The Mother (sadly): I was afraid of that. And I shall hurt you
If I explain.
The Father: No, no! You will not hurt me,
Or, if you do, it will be for my good.
The Mother (after a moment): One day, one little day ago,
If it has been even a day ago,
You were the whole of love, and now you are
The least and last of it, and lost in it.
It is as if you went out of that world,
With that old self of mine, when this new self
Came with our baby here. There, now. I knew It!
I knew that I should hurt you, darling!
The Father: No.
I am not hurt, and I can understand.
I would not have it different. I should hate
Myself if I could make you care for me
In that old way. It did seem beautiful,
But this—this!
[He bends over the mother and child, and gathers them both into his
arms.
The Mother (putting her hand on his head, and gently smoothing it):
There, you'll wake the baby, dearest.
How strange it seems, my saying that already!
But now I am so sleepy, and the doctor
Said that I ought to sleep. You must not mind
If baby and I drive you out of the room?
I must be quiet now. You are not wounded?
[She stretches her hand toward him as he rises and turns toward
the door.
The Father: You could not wound me now, and I believe
We never can wound each other any more,
For she will come between us and will keep us
Safe from each other.
The Mother: Oh, how sweet you are!
Everything now is clear and right, and you,
You with your love have make it so for me.
Dearest, I am so glad of you and her!
I am so happy and I am so sleepy!
The Father (catching her hand to his mouth): Go to sleep, then, my
sleepy, happy love!
Sleep is the best thing even for happiness.
I am going to sleep.
The Mother: (drowsily): Then I will go to sleep.
Father, good-night!
The Father (joyously): No, no; good-morning, mother.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net