Silently bends the Mother above
Her sleeping Baby, her rose-bud fresh,
Her pure face full of the light and love
That shine from within through the lucent flesh.
Dreamfly, vividity, under and through
The forms we see she beholds the More,
The earthly labyrinth’s golden clue,
An odorous waif from the heavenly shore!
A fledgling soul in its cradle-nest,
An Eden flower on its nodding bough,
Her own full heart in another breast,
A joy, a wonder, a heaven below!
Out of a halo of golden curls
The round face shines like a clouded moon,
Two dimples dust it like tiny whirls
Where a pebble drops in a calm lagoon.
Pressed in the pillow is one pink cheek
And a half-closed fist beside its lies;
The satin lids, that the blue veins streak,
Seem tinged with a ray from the shut blue eyes.
The little mouth is a budded kiss;
The little ear to a pink pearl shell
That holds a murmur from life’s abyss
That the wordless tongue can warble well!
Mother, too, knows, and softly sings
That primal note in her brooding songs;
To the wave of that deep the cradle swings
And Baby’s smile to its gleam belongs!
Ah, little we know how high, how deep
Is the world involved in that baby-nest;
How all life sleeps in his rosy sleep
And the jarring spheres on their axles rest.
For the mother-love folds him warmly in,
And shuts for the moment the loud world out,
Her dreams with Baby’s commingle, and win
The heaven of his vision, undimmed by doubt.
Dream on delighted, oh children twain
Of the Mighty Mother — your dream is true;
Through the waking earth-life’s care and pain
May cloud for a little its heaven of blue.
Ye are rocked together on one warm breast;
The infinite murmur of life’s deep sea
Is the lullaby song of your equal rest
In the arms of a love supreme and free!
Brood, Mother, thy cradle so full of all bliss;
Look reverent out of that portal of love,
The light from a sun-world diviner than this
Streams in through its vista to lure thee above!
Over the Empty Cradle
