William Sergeant Kendall Painting
Songs for My Mother I-Her Hands My mother's hands are cool and fair, When I was small and could not sleep, For everything she ever touched Her hands remember how they played Swift through her haunted fingers pass One time she touched the cloud that kissed All this was very long ago For still when drowsiness comes on II-Her Words My mother has the prettiest tricks She shapes her speech all silver fine And if she goes to make a call We had not dreamed these things were so God wove a web of loveliness,
by Anna Hempstead Branch
They can do anything.
Delicate mercies hide them there
Like flowers in the spring.
She used to come to me,
And with my cheek upon her hand
How sure my rest would be.
Of beautiful or fine,
Their memories living in her hands
Would warm that sleep of mine.
One time in meadow streams, --
And all the flickering song and shade
Of water took my dreams.
Memories of garden things; --
I dipped my face in flowers and grass
And sounds of hidden wings.
Brown pastures bleak and far; --
I leaned my cheek into a mist
And thought I was a star.
And I am grown; but yet
The hand that lured my slumber so
I never can forget.
It seems so soft and cool,
Shaped happily beneath my cheek,
Hollow and beautiful.
Of words and words and words.
Her talk comes out as smooth and sleek
As breasts of singing birds.
Because she loves it so.
And her own eyes begin to shine
To hear her stories grow.
Or out to take a walk
We leave our work when she returns
And run to hear her talk.
Of sorrow and of mirth.
Her speech is as a thousand eyes
Through which we see the earth.
Of clouds and stars and birds,
But made not any thing at all
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