NOVEMBER TWENTY-SECOND
'T is thus, though wooed by flattering friends,
And fed with fame (if fame it be),
This heart, my own dear mother, bends
With love's true instinct, back to thee.
Swinburne
NOVEMBER TWENTY-THIRD
To prayer, my child! And oh, be thy first prayer
For her, who many nights with anxious care,
Rocked thy first cradle: who took thy infant soul
From heaven and gave it to the world: then rife
With love, still drank the gall of life
And left for thy young lips the honeyed bowl.
Victor Hugo
NOVEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH
Above the hills, along the blue,
Round the bright air, with footing true,
To please the child, to paint the rose,
The Gardener of the World, he goes.
Robert Louis Stevenson
NOVEMBER TWENTY-FIFTH
Children, aye, forsooth,
They bring their own love with them when they come.
Jean Ingelow
NOVEMBER TWENTY-SIXTH
We came upon
A wildfowl sitting on her nest, so still
I reached my hand and touched her: she did not stir;
The snow had frozen round her, and she sat,
Stone-dead, upon a heap of ice-cold eggs,
Look, how this love, this mother, runs through all
The world God made—even the beast, the bird!
Tennyson