Potiphar's Wife and Other Poems/Mothers

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For works with similar titles, see Mother.


MOTHERS

(A Dialogue at Boston, Mass., U. S. A.)

"See there," he said, "my fair American!
Yon noisy child
I'd like to choke, being but 'brutal man;'
That Mother mild

"Takes all its howls for music, comforts it
With song and kiss:
And gives it, at the loudest of its fit,
Her milky bliss.

"And there again,—yon little lambkin bleating,
Made for mint-sauce:
At its first cry the Ewe quits clover-eating
And runs, perforce.

"And yet again, that purple-winged hen-starling,
Hungry—I'll vouch it!
Flies with a fat grub to her nested darling,
Nor dreams to pouch it!

"She-mercy everywhere, she-pitying
In helpless season!
You Boston girls seem up to everything:
Tell me the reason."

"Why, certainly!" she smiled, "don't poets know
Better than others?
God can't be always everywhere: and, so,
Invented Mothers."