Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

Poems of Home: I. About Children

The Mother’s Hope

Laman Blanchard (1803–1845)

IS there, when the winds are singing

In the happy summer-time,—

When the raptured air is ringing

With Earth’s music heavenward springing,

Forest chirp, and village chime,—

Is there, of the sounds that float

Unsighingly, a single note

Half so sweet and clear and wild

As the laughter of a child?

Listen! and be now delighted:

Morn hath touched her golden strings;

Earth and Sky their vows have plighted;

Life and Light are reunited

Amid countless carollings;

Yet, delicious as they are,

There ’s a sound that ’s sweeter far,—

One that makes the heart rejoice

More than all,—the human voice!

Organ finer, deeper, clearer,

Though it be a stranger’s tone,—

Than the winds or waters dearer,

More enchanting to the hearer,

For it answereth to his own.

But, of all its witching words,

Sweeter than the song of birds,

Those are sweetest, bubbling wild

Through the laughter of a child.

Harmonies from time-touched towers,

Haunted strains from rivulets,

Hum of bees among the flowers,

Rustling leaves, and silver showers,—

These, erelong, the ear forgets;

But in mine there is a sound

Ringing on the whole year round,—

Heart-deep laughter that I heard

Ere my child could speak a word.

Ah! ’t was heard by ear far purer,

Fondlier formed to catch the strain,—

Ear of one whose love is surer,—

Hers, the mother, the endurer

Of the deepest share of pain;

Hers the deepest bliss to treasure

Memories of that cry of pleasure,

Hers to hoard, a lifetime after,

Echoes of that infant laughter.

’T is a mother’s large affection

Hears with a mysterious sense,—

Breathings that evade detection,

Whisper faint, and fine inflection,

Thrill in her with power intense.

Childhood’s honeyed words untaught

Hiveth she in loving thought,—

Tones that never thence depart;

For she listens—with her heart.