My mother has the prettiest tricks
Of words and words and words.
Her talk comes out as smooth and sleek
As breasts of singing birds.
She shapes her speech all silver fine
Because she loves it so.
And her own eyes begin to shine
To hear her stories grow.
And if she goes to make a call
Or out to take a walk
We leave our work when she returns
And run to hear her talk.
We had not dreamed these things were so
Of sorrow and of mirth.
Her speech is as a thousand eyes
Through which we see the earth.
God wove a web of loveliness,
Of clouds and stars and birds,
But made not any thing at all
So beautiful as words.
They shine around our simple earth
With golden shadowings,
And every common thing they touch
Is exquisite with wings.
There's nothing poor and nothing small
But is made fair with them.
They are the hands of living faith
That touch the garment's hem.
They are as fair as bloom or air,
They shine like any star,
And I am rich who learned from her
How beautiful they are.
The Daguerreotype. [William Vaughn Moody]
This, then, is she,
My mother as she looked at seventeen,
When she first met my father. Young incredibly,
Younger than spring, without the faintest trace
Of disappointment, weariness, or tean
Upon the childlike earnestness and grace
Of the waiting face.
Those close-wound ropes of pearl
(Or common beads made precious by their use)
Seem heavy for so slight a throat to wear;
But the low bodice leaves the shoulders bare
And half the glad swell of the breast, for news
That now the woman stirs within the girl.
And yet,
Even so, the loops and globes
Of beaten gold
And jet
Hung, in the stately way of old,
From the ears' drooping lobes
On festivals and Lord's-day of the week,
Show all too matron-sober for the cheek, —
Which, now I look again, is perfect child,
Or no — or no — 't is girlhood's very self,
Moulded by some deep, mischief-ridden elf
So meek, so maiden mild,
But startling the close gazer with the sense
Of passions forest-shy and forest-wild,
And delicate delirious merriments.