Cover art
(woman and baby)
Title page
A MOTHER'S
YEAR-BOOK
EDITED BY
FRANCIS McKINNON MORTON
AND
MARY McKINNON McSWAIN
NEW YORK
THOMAS Y CROWELL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1911,
BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY.
PREFACE
This little volume has been compiled for mothers and is lovingly offered as a tribute to the memory of the almost perfect mother whose love cradled my own childhood so sweetly as to make all motherhood forever more dear to me.
It seems to be true that the years of a woman's life that sink deepest into her heart and are fraught with her keenest joy and pain are the years when her little children are clinging about her skirts. Then it is that she is truly "wealthy with small cares, and small hands clinging to her knees." But then, too, she is often too busy with the passing of the full days and the long nights, so often punctuated by the restless clinging of rosy fingers and all the dear demands of babyhood, to realize fully how blest are the days through which she is living.
It is especially for the busy mother that I have gathered this little collection of beautiful thoughts about childhood and motherhood, from some of the world's best thinkers.
I hope it may bring to some of them as much pleasure in the reading as it has to me in the preparation.
The selections from the writings of Lucy Larcom, Holmes, Whittier, Longfellow, Emerson, Lowell, Celia Thaxter, and Edith Thomas are used by the courteous permission of the authorized publishers of these writers, the Houghton Mifflin Company.
The selections from the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson are from "A Child's Garden of Verses."
The selection from Sidney Lanier is taken from "The Poems of Sidney Lanier." Both are published by Charles Scribner's Sons and the selections are used by permission of that firm. The little poem from Eugene Field is also used by special arrangement with Charles Scribner's Sons, the authorized publishers of the works of Eugene Field.
The selections from the book called "The Finest Baby in the World" are used by the courtesy of its publishers, the Fleming H. Revell Company.
The selection from Ruth McEnery Stuart is taken from "Napoleon Jackson," published by the Century Company, and is used with their permission.
The selection from the writings of Lewis Carroll is taken from the "Adventures of Alice in Wonderland" and is used by permission of the publishers, the Macmillan Company.
Acknowledgment is also made to the Bobbs-Merrill Company for the use of the selections from the writings of James Whitcomb Riley, and to D. Appleton & Co. for the selections from Bryant.
Acknowledgment is due the courtesy of the New York Sun and the Denver News for the use of the selections credited to them.
An effort has been made to find the name and the author of each selection used so that proper credit could be given with each. This has not been always possible and I have chosen not to leave out a beautiful selection on that account.
George MacDonald says, "He who drops a beautiful thought into the heart of a friend gives as the angels do"; and Emerson says that "Next to the originator of a beautiful thought is the one who first quotes it." So I do not think that any one who has said anything beautiful about childhood would wish to be left out of a Mother's Year Book even if the credit for his work was not given quite correctly.
FRANCIS MCKINNON MORTON.
JANUARY
JANUARY FIRST
Where did you come from, Baby Dear?
Out of the Everywhere into the here.
. . . . . . . .
But how did you come to us, you Dear?
God thought of you and so I am here.
George MacDonald
JANUARY SECOND
What is the dream in the Baby's eyes
As he lies and blinks in a mute surprise?
. . . . . . . .
Bathed in the dawnlight, what does he see
That slow years have hidden from you and from me?
Tom Cordry
JANUARY THIRD
Little Life from out the life Divine,
Little heart so near and dear to mine,
Little bark, new-launched upon Life's sea
Floating o'er the tide to mine and me,
Little comer on our shore of time,
Little ray from out God's great sublime,
Little traveller from Eternity
May my love protect and shelter thee.
The Denver News
JANUARY FOURTH
What shall we wrap the Baby in?
Nothing that fingers have woven will do:
Looms of the heart weave ever anew:
Love, only Love is the right thread to spin
Love we must wrap the Baby in.
Lucy Larcom
JANUARY FIFTH
Look at me with thy large brown eyes,
Philip, my King!
For round thee the purple shadow lies
Of babyhood's regal dignities.
Lay on my neck thy tiny hand,
With Love's invisible scepter laden;
I am thine Esther to command,
Till thou shalt find thy queen-handmaiden,
Philip, my King!
Dinah Mulock Craik
JANUARY SIXTH
Nay, but our children in our midst,
What else but our hearts are they,
Walking on the ground?
If but the breeze blew harsh on one of them,
Mine eye says "No" to slumber all night long.
From the "Hamasah"
Hittan idnibn al-Mu'alla of Tayyi
JANUARY SEVENTH
We must take all our children bring us whether it
be Joy or Pain.
Auerbach
JANUARY EIGHTH
Oh child, what news from Heaven?
Swinburne
JANUARY NINTH
Sweet floweret, pledge o' meikle love,
And ward o' mony a prayer,
What heart o' stane wad thou na move,
Sae helpless, sweet and fair?
Robert Burns
JANUARY TENTH
His child's unsullied purity demands
The deepest reverence at a parent's hands.
Juvenal
JANUARY ELEVENTH
Little Gossip, blithe and hale,
Tattling many a broken tale,
Singing many a tuneless song,
Lavish of a heedless tongue,
Simple maid, void of art,
Babbling out thy very heart.
Ambrose Phillips
JANUARY TWELFTH
O child! O new-born denizen
Of Life's great city! On thy head
The glory, of the morn is shed
Like a celestial benison.
Longfellow
JANUARY THIRTEENTH
Ah! This taking to one's arms a little group of
souls, fresh from the hand of God, and living with
them in loving companionship through all their
stainless years is, or ought to be, like living in Heaven,
for of such is the Heavenly Kingdom.
J. G. Holland
JANUARY FOURTEENTH
The sun of dawn,
That brightens through the mother's tender eyes.
Tennyson
JANUARY FIFTEENTH
We are so dull and thankless; and too slow
To catch the sunshine till it slips away,
And now it seems surpassing strange to me
That while I wore the badge of Motherhood,
I did not kiss more oft and tenderly
The little child that brought me only good.
Mary Louise Riley Smith
JANUARY SIXTEENTH
Children are God's apostles, day by day
Sent forth to preach of Love and Hope and Peace.
Lowell
JANUARY SEVENTEENTH
She has forgotten her sufferings for joy that the
child is born.
Kipling
JANUARY EIGHTEENTH
A Baby's feet, like sea-shells pink,
Might tempt, should Heaven see meet,
An angel's lips to kiss, we think,
A Baby's feet.
Like rose-hued sea flowers, toward the heart
They stretch and spread and wink
Their ten soft buds that part and meet.
Swinburne
JANUARY NINETEENTH
Greek babies were like the babies of modern
Europe: equally troublesome, equally delightful to
their parents, equally uninteresting to the rest of
society.
Mahaffy
JANUARY TWENTIETH
They knew as I do now, what keen delight
A strong man feels to watch the tender flight
Of little children playing in his sight.
Edmund Gosse
JANUARY TWENTY-FIRST
The child would twine
A trustful hand, unasked in thine
And find his comfort in thy face.
Tennyson
JANUARY TWENTY-SECOND
This little seed of life and love,
Just lent us for a day.
Parsons
JANUARY TWENTY-THIRD
Pray for the infant's soul:
With its spirit crown unsoiled.
Philip James Bailey
JANUARY TWENTY-FOURTH
Child of brighter than the morning's birth,
And lovelier than all smiles that may be smiled
Save only of little children undefiled,
Sweet, perfect, witless of their own dear worth,
Like rose of love, mute melody of mirth,
Glad as a bird is when the woods are mild,
Adorable as is nothing save a child,
Hails with wide eyes and lips on earth,
His lovely life with all its heaven to be.
Swinburne
JANUARY TWENTY-FIFTH
Where has he gone to, Mother's boy,
Little plaid dresses and curls of joy?
Who is this Gentleman, haughty in glance
Walking around in a new pair of pants?
Folger McKinsey
JANUARY TWENTY-SIXTH
It is very nice to think
The world is full of meat and drink,
With little children saying grace
In every Christian kind of place.
Robert Louis Stevenson
JANUARY TWENTY-SEVENTH
Did truth on earth ever hide,
Hath innocence anywhere smiled,
Did purity anywhere bide,
They are found in the eyes of a child.
Harry Alexander Moore
JANUARY TWENTY-EIGHTH
Now he thinks he 'll go to sleep:
I can see the shadows creep
Over his eyes in soft eclipse,
Over his brow and over his lips,
Out to his little finger tips:
Softly sinking down he goes!
Down he goes! Down he goes!
See! He is hushed in sweet repose!
J. G. Holland
JANUARY TWENTY-NINTH
To what shall I liken her smiling
Upon me, her kneeling lover?
How it leaped from her lips to her eyelids,
And dimpled her wholly over,
Till her outstretched hands smiled also
And I almost seem to see
The very heart of her mother
Sending sun, through her veins, to me.
Lowell
JANUARY THIRTIETH
Innocent child and snow-white flower,
Well are ye paired in your opening hour!
Reprinted from Bryant's Complete Poetical Works, by permission of D. Appleton & Company.
JANUARY THIRTY-FIRST
Ye are better than all the ballads
That ever were sung or said,
For ye are living poems
And all the rest are dead.
Longfellow
FEBRUARY
FEBRUARY FIRST
I wonder so that mothers ever fret
At little children clinging to their gown;
Or that the footprints, when the days are wet
Are ever black enough to make them frown,
If I could find a little muddy boot,
Or cap or jacket on my chamber floor,
If I could kiss a rosy, restless foot
And hear it patter in my house once more;
If I could mend a broken cart to-day,
To-morrow make a kite to reach the sky—
There is no woman in God's world could say
She was more blissfully content than I.
Mary Louise Riley Smith
FEBRUARY SECOND
The very souls of children readily receive the
impressions of those things that are dropped into
them while they are yet but soft.
Plutarch
FEBRUARY THIRD
As babes will sigh for deep content
When their sweet hearts for peace make room,
As given, not lent.
Jean Ingelow
FEBRUARY FOURTH
Childhood soberly she wears,
Taking hold of woman's cares
Through love's outreach, unawares.
Lucy Larcom
FEBRUARY FIFTH
I searched for love through many a weary mile,
Till, sick and weary, to my homestead turning
Thou earnest to greet me with a mother's smile
And there upon thy dearest features burning
I saw that love I long had sought in vain.
Heine
FEBRUARY SIXTH
And still the children listed, their blue eyes
Fixed on their mother's face in wide surprise.
Matthew Arnold
FEBRUARY SEVENTH
So we will not sell the Baby!
Your gold and gems and stuff,
Were they ever so rare and precious
Would never be half enough!
For what would we care, My Dearie,
What glory the world put on,
If our beautiful darling was going,
If our beautiful darling was gone.
Selected
FEBRUARY EIGHTH
The happy children! Full of frank surprise,
And sudden whims and innocent ecstacies:
What Godhead sparkles from their liquid eyes.
Edmund Gosse
FEBRUARY NINTH
In him woke
With his first babe's first cry, the noble wish
To save all earnings to the uttermost,
And give his child a better bringing up
Than his had been, or hers.
Tennyson
FEBRUARY TENTH
Children have more need of models than of critics.
Joubert
FEBRUARY ELEVENTH
I wait for my story—the birds cannot sing it,
Not one as he sits on his tree;
The bells can not ring it, but long years oh, bring it
Such as I wish it to be.
Jean Ingelow
FEBRUARY TWELFTH
Thou who didst not erst deny
The mother-joy to Mary mild,
Blessed in the blessed child.
Which hearkened in meek babyhood
Her cradle hymn, albeit used
To all that music interfused
In breasts of angels high and good.
Mrs. Browning
FEBRUARY THIRTEENTH
So sits the while at home the mother well content.
Robert Louis Stevenson
FEBRUARY FOURTEENTH
What use to me the gold and silver hoard?
What use to me the gems most rich and rare?
Brighter by far—aye, bright beyond compare,
The joys my children to my heart afford.
From the Japanese
FEBRUARY FIFTEENTH
Never to living ears came sweeter sounds
Than when I heard thee, by our own fireside
First uttering, without words, a natural tune
While thou, a feeding babe, didst in thy joy
Sing at thy mother's breast.
Wordsworth
FEBRUARY SIXTEENTH
A woman lives
Not bettered, quickened toward the truth and good
Through being a mother?
Mrs. Browning
FEBRUARY SEVENTEENTH
One's early life is certainly a great deal more
amusing to look back to than it used to be while it was
going on.
Anne Thackeray Ritchie
FEBRUARY EIGHTEENTH
When thou hast taken thy repast,
Repose my babe on me;
So may thy mother and thy nurse
Thy cradle also be.
Sing lullaby, my little boy,
Sing lullaby, mine only joy.
Anonymous
FEBRUARY NINETEENTH
Ere thy lips learn, too soon,
Their soft, first human tune,
Sweet, but less sweet than now,
And thy raised eyes to read
Glad and good things indeed,
But none so sweet as thou.
Swinburne
FEBRUARY TWENTIETH
Beat upon mine, little heart! beat! beat!
Beat upon mine! You are mine, my sweet!
All mine, from your pretty blue eyes to your feet.
Tennyson
FEBRUARY TWENTY-FIRST
What is the little one thinking about?
Very wonderful things no doubt!
Unwritten history!
Unfathomed mystery!
J. G. Holland
FEBRUARY TWENTY-SECOND
The real education of children is to keep them at
work and make them unselfish.
Ambrosias
FEBRUARY TWENTY-THIRD
Then be contented.
Thou hast got
The most of Heaven in thy young lot;
There's sky blue in thy cup.
Hood
FEBRUARY TWENTY-FOURTH
Her infancy, a wonder-working charm,
Laid hold upon his love.
Jean Ingelow
FEBRUARY TWENTY-FIFTH
So for the mother's sake the child was dear,
And dearer was the mother for the child.
S. T. Coleridge
FEBRUARY TWENTY-SIXTH
A kiss when the day is over,
A kiss when the day begins,
My mamma's as full of kisses
As a nurse is full of pins.
Selected
FEBRUARY TWENTY-SEVENTH
The child-heart is so strange a little thing,
So mild, so timorously shy and small,
When grown-up hearts throb, it goes scampering
Behind the wall, nor dares peer out at all!
It is the veriest mouse
That hides in any house!
So wild a thing is any child-heart!
James Whitcomb Riley
From "A Child World." Copyright, 1897. Used by special permission of the publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
FEBRUARY TWENTY-EIGHTH
Out of the dark, sweet sleep
Where no dreams laugh or weep,
Borne through the bright gates of birth
Into the dim sweet light
Where day still dreams of night,
While heaven takes form on earth.
Swinburne
FEBRUARY TWENTY-NINTH
For what are all our contrivings
And the wisdom of all our books
When compared with your caresses
And the gladness of your looks.
Longfellow
MARCH
MARCH FIRST
I am one who holds a treasure
And a gem of wondrous cost;
But I mar my heart's deep pleasure
With the fear it may be lost.
. . . . . . . .
Then spoke the Angel of mothers
To me, in gentle tone,
"Be kind to the children of others
And thus deserve thine own."
Julia Ward Howe
MARCH SECOND
Here at the portals thou dost stand
And, with thy little hand,
Thou openest the mysterious gate
Into the future's undiscovered land.
Longfellow
MARCH THIRD
Like children with violets playing
In the shade of the whispering trees.
Charles Kingsley
MARCH FOURTH
Infancy is the perpetual Messiah, which comes
into the arms of fallen men and pleads with them to
return to Paradise
Emerson
MARCH FIFTH
Come to me O ye children!
For I hear you at your play
And the questions that perplexed me
Have vanished quite away.
Longfellow
MARCH SIXTH
A solemn thing it is to me
To look upon a babe that sleeps,
Wearing in its spirit-deeps
The undeveloped mystery
Of our Adam's taint and woe,
Which, when they developed be,
Will not let it slumber so.
Mrs. Browning
MARCH SEVENTH
Some one had left the gate ajar,
Heaven's gate, you know, my dear,
And a baby angel winging by
Peeped out on a scene most drear.
"Oh me!" he murmured in dulcet tones,
"The old Earth needs more light;
I guess I 'll fly a little way
And carry a sunbeam bright."
Selected
MARCH EIGHTH
Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! It thrills my heart
With tender gladness thus to look at thee.
S. T. Coleridge
MARCH NINTH
When I hustle home at evening,
And the light shines from the door,
An' I see my little baby
Rollin' happy on the floor,
An' see Sister helpin' Mother,
I'm as tickled as can be
An' there aint no King a-livin'
That has got the best o' me.
Judd Mortimer Lewis
MARCH TENTH
O blossom boy! So calm in thy repose!
So sweet a compromise of life and death,
'Tis pity those fair buds shall e'er unclose
For memory to stain their inward leaf,
Tinging thy dreams with unacquainted grief.
Hood
MARCH ELEVENTH
O let thy children lean aslant
Against the tender mother's knee,
And gaze into her face, and want
To know what magic there can be
In words that urge some eyes to dance
While others, as in holy trance,
Look up to Heaven, be such my praise.
Walter Savage Landor
MARCH TWELFTH
Oh, 'tis a touching thing, to make one weep!
A tender infant with its curtained eye
Breathing as it would neither live nor die
With that unchanging countenance of sleep!
Hood
MARCH THIRTEENTH
Two faces o'er a cradle bent;
Two hands above the head were locked,
These pressed each other while they rocked,
Those watched a life that love had sent.
O solemn hour!
O hidden power!
George Eliot
MARCH FOURTEENTH
To see a child so very fair
It was a pure delight.
Wordsworth
MARCH FIFTEENTH
The tree germ bears within itself the nature of
the whole tree; the human being bears within itself
the nature of all humanity, and is not, therefore,
humanity born anew in each child?
Froebel
MARCH SIXTEENTH
Thoughts of all fair and useful things,
The hopes of early years;
And childhood's purity and grace,
And joys that like a rainbow chase
The passing shower of tears.
Bryant
Reprinted from Bryant's Complete Poetical Works by special permission, of D. Appleton & Co.
MARCH SEVENTEENTH
Sweet is the holiness of youth.
Wordsworth
MARCH EIGHTEENTH
All its dainty body, honey sweet,
Clenched hands and curled up feet
That on the roses of the dawn have trod
As they came down from God.
Swinburne
MARCH NINETEENTH
Within my tender mother's arms I sported,
I played at horse upon my grandsire's knee;
Sorrow and care and anger, ill-reported,
As little known as gold or Greek to me.
Baggesen
MARCH TWENTIETH
How do you like to go up in a swing
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
Robert Louis Stevenson
MARCH TWENTY-FIRST
Sleep, sweet babe! my cares beguiling!
Mother sits beside thee smiling!
Sleep my darling, tenderly!
If thou sleep not, mother mourneth,
Singing as her wheel she turneth;
Come soft slumber, balmily.
S. T. Coleridge
MARCH TWENTY-SECOND
O sweet sleep-angel, throned now
On the round glory of his brow!
Wave thy wing and waft my vow
Breathed over Baby Charley.
I vow that my heart, when death is nigh,
Shall never shiver with a sigh
For act of hand or tongue or eye
That wronged my Baby Charley.
Sidney Lanier
MARCH TWENTY-THIRD
She seemed a thing
Of Heaven's prime uncorrupted work, a child
Of early nature undefiled,
A daughter of the years of innocence,
And, therefore, all things loved her.
Southey
MARCH TWENTY-FOURTH
Bairns and their bairns make sure a firmer tie
Than aught in love the like of us can spy.
Allan Ramsay
MARCH TWENTY-FIFTH
Slumber little friend so wee,
Joy thy joy is bringing.
Bellman
MARCH TWENTY-SIXTH
Thou straggler into loving arms,
Young climber up of knees,
When I forget thy thousand ways
Then life and all shall cease.
Charles Lamb
MARCH TWENTY-SEVENTH
Where children are not, heaven is not, and heaven,
If they come not again, shall be never!
But the face and the voice of a child are assurances
of heaven and its promises forever.
Swinburne
MARCH TWENTY-EIGHTH
O blessed vision! Happy child!
Thou art so exquisitely wild,
I think of thee with many fears
For what may be thy lot in future years.
Wordsworth
MARCH TWENTY-NINTH
And with heaven in their hearts and their faces,
Up rose the children all.
Longfellow
MARCH THIRTIETH
No baby in the house, I know,
'T is far too nice and clean;
No toys, by careless fingers strown,
Upon the floors are seen.
Clara G. Dolliver
MARCH THIRTY-FIRST
The simple lessons which the nursery taught
Fell soft and stainless on the buds of thought,
And the full blossom owes its fairest hue
To those sweet tear drops of affection's dew.
Holmes
APRIL
APRIL FIRST
But Jesus said, Suffer the little children to
come unto me; for of such is the kingdom of
Heaven.
Matt. xix. 14
APRIL SECOND
Sweet and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea,
Low, low, breathe and blow,
Wind of the western sea!
Over the rolling waters go,
Come from the dying moon and blow,
Blow him again to me;
While my little one, while my pretty one sleeps
Tennyson
APRIL THIRD
My mother she's so good to me,
If I was good as I could be,
I couldn't be as good—no, sir!—
Can't any boy be as good as her!
She loves me when I'm glad er sad;
She loves me when I'm good er bad,
An', what's a funniest thing, she says
She loves me when she punishes.
James Whitcomb Riley
From "Poems here at Home." Copyright, 1893-1898. Used by permission of the publishers, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
APRIL FOURTH
The first train leaves at six P.M.
For the land where the poppy blows,
The mother dear is the engineer,
And the passenger laughs and crows;
The palace car is the mother's arms,
The whistle a low sweet strain,
And the passenger winks and nods and blinks
And goes to sleep on the train.
Edgar Wade Abbott
APRIL FIFTH
In the house of too-much-trouble
Lived a lonely little boy;
He was eager for a playmate,
He was hungry for a toy.
But 'twas always too much bother,
Too much dirt and too much noise:
For the house of too-much-trouble
Wasn't meant for little boys.
Albert Bigelow Paine
APRIL SIXTH
I long for every childish, loving word;
And for thy little footsteps, fairy light,
That hither, thither moved and ever stirred
My heart with them to gladness infinite.
Carmen Sylva
APRIL SEVENTH
A laugh of innocence and joy
Resounds like music of the fairest grace,
And gladly turning from the world's annoy,
I gaze upon a little radiant face
And bless internally the merry boy
Who makes a "son-shine in a shady place."
Hood
APRIL EIGHTH
I had a little daughter
And she was given to me
To lead me gently backward
To the Heavenly Father's knee.
Lowell
APRIL NINTH
Did any one ever tell you
To "stop makin' such a noise,"
When you wuz a-playin' Injun,
An' war-whoopin' with the boys?
Did any one never tell you
Your manners wuz loud and bold?
Then I guess you are one of the grown-ups
And not a boy nine years old.
Exchange
APRIL TENTH
Let us call to mind the years before our little
daughter was born. We are now in the same condition
as then, except that the time she was with us
is to be counted as an added blessing. Let us not
ungratefully accuse fortune for what was given us
because we could not also have all that was desired.
We should not be like misers who never enjoy what
they have but only bewail what they lose.
Plutarch
APRIL ELEVENTH
And I, for one, would much rather;
If I could merit so sweet a thing,
Be the poet of little children
Than the laureate of a King.
Lucy Larcom
APRIL TWELFTH
Ah! Child, what are we, that our ears
Should hear you singing on your way,
Should have this happiness?
Swinburne
APRIL THIRTEENTH
Speak gently to the young,
For they will have enough to bear;
Pass through life as best they may,
'T is full of anxious care.
David Bates
APRIL FOURTEENTH
My Mother's voice! how often creeps
Its cadence on my lonely hours!
Like healing sent on wings of sleep,
Or dew to the unconscious flowers.
I can forget her melting prayer
While leaping pulses madly fly,
But in the still unbroken air
Her gentle tone comes stealing by,
And years and sin and manhood flee
And leave me at my mother's knee.
N. P. Willis
APRIL FIFTEENTH
And then her heart would warm with hope, perhaps,
of what might be to come, of the overwhelming
possibilities—how many of them, to her, lay in
the warm clasp of the child's hand that came pushing
into hers!
Anne Thackeray Ritchie
APRIL SIXTEENTH
The barb in the arrow of childhood's suffering is
this: its intense loneliness, its intense ignorance.
Olive Schreiner
APRIL SEVENTEENTH
Like happy children in their play,
Whose hearts run over into song.
Lowell
APRIL EIGHTEENTH
Ah! what would the world be to us
If the children were no more?
We should dread the desert behind us
Worse than the dark before.
Longfellow
APRIL NINETEENTH
Who can tell what a baby thinks?
Who can follow the gossamer links
By which the manikin feels his way
Out from the shore of the great unknown,
Blind and wailing and alone,
Into the light of day?
J. G. Holland
APRIL TWENTIETH
Dear little face, that lies in calm content
Within the gracious hollow that God made
In every human shoulder, where he meant
Some tired head for comfort should be laid.
Celia Thaxter
APRIL TWENTY-FIRST
This three-fold heaven, which you also bear within
you, shines out on you through your child's eyes.
Froebel
APRIL TWENTY-SECOND
Dance little child, oh dance!
While sweet the wild birds sing,
And flowers bloom fair, and every glance
Of sunshine tells of Spring.
Oh! bloom and sing and smile
Child, bird and flower and make
The sad old world forget awhile,
Its sorrow for your sake.
Celia Thaxter
APRIL TWENTY-THIRD
If the golden-crested wren
Were a nightingale, why, then
Something seen and heard of men
Might be half as sweet as when
Laughs a child of seven.
Swinburne
APRIL TWENTY-FOURTH
O little ones whom I have found
Among earth's green paths playing,
Though listening far behind, around,
There comes to me no sweeter sound
Than words I hear you saying.
Lucy Larcom
APRIL TWENTY-FIFTH
A child sees what we are, behind what we wish
to be.
Amiel
APRIL TWENTY-SIXTH
Dear Child! how radiant on thy Mother's knee,
With merry-making eyes and jocund smiles,
Thou gazest at the painted tiles.
Longfellow
APRIL TWENTY-SEVENTH
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
Wordsworth
APRIL TWENTY-EIGHTH
Happy hearts and happy faces,
Happy play in grassy places,
That was how, in ancient ages,
Children grew to kings and sages.
Robert Louis Stevenson
APRIL TWENTY-NINTH
That wide-gazing calm which makes us older human
beings, with our inward turmoil, feel a certain
awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel
before some quiet majesty or beauty in the earth or sky.
George Eliot
APRIL THIRTIETH
Her, by her smile, how soon the stranger knows,
How soon by his the glad discovery shows,
As to her lips she lifts the lovely boy,
What answering looks of sympathy and joy!
He walks, he speaks. In many a broken word
His wants, his wishes and his griefs are heard.
And ever, ever to her lap he flies,
When rosy sleep comes on with sweet surprise.
Samuel Rogers
MAY
MAY FIRST
The child whose face illumes our way,
Whose voice lifts up the heart that hears,
Whose hand is as the hand of May.
Swinburne
MAY SECOND
Baby's skies are mother's eyes,
Mother's eyes and smiles together
Make the Baby's pleasant weather.
Selected
MAY THIRD
Oh, when I was a tiny boy
My days and nights were full of joy
Hood
MAY FOURTH
Sweet babe, in thy face
Soft desires I can trace,
Secret joys and secret smiles,
Little pretty infant wiles.
William Blake
MAY FIFTH
For Childhood, is a tender thing, easily wrought
into any shape.
Plutarch
MAY SIXTH
The gilded evenings calm and late
When weary children homeward run.
William Allingham
MAY SEVENTH
Make your children happy in their youth; let
distinction come to them, if it will, after well-spent
years but let them now break and eat the bread of
Heaven with gladness and singleness of heart and
send portions to them for whom nothing is prepared;
and so Heaven send you its grace before meat
and after it.
Ruskin
MAY EIGHTH
The babe by its mother
Lies bathed in joy,
Glide its hours uncounted,
The sun is its toy;
Shines the peace of all its being,
Without cloud, in its eyes,
And the sun of the world
In soft miniature lies.
Emerson
MAY NINTH
In those days life was a simple matter to the
children; their days and their legs lengthened together.
Anne Thackeray Ritchie
MAY TENTH
Timely blossom, infant fair,
Fondling of a happy pair,
Every morn and every night
Their solicitous delight,
Sleeping, waking, still at ease,
Pleasing without skill to please.
Ambrose Phillips
MAY ELEVENTH
Then the face of a mother looks back, through the mist
Of the tears that are welling; and, lucent with light,
I see the dear smile of the lips I have kissed
As she knelt by my cradle at morning and night;
And my arms are outheld with a yearning too wild
For any but God in His love to inspire,
As she pleads at the foot of His throne for her child—
As I sit in the silence and gaze in the fire.
James Whitcomb Riley
From "Rhymes of Childhood." Copyright, 1890-1898. Used by special permission of the publishers, The Bobbs-Merritt Company.
MAY TWELFTH