“To express the feelings of an earnest Mother when she sent her Babe into the Great World”
Tell not of the Spartan Mother who could arm for bloody fray
All the brave sons of her nurturing and speed them on their way;
When borne upon their bucklers back, the fair young warriors came
Could smile upon the deep breast-wound their gate of death and fame;
And but for living Cowardice wept tears of wrath and shame!
O, deadlier than the strife of arms in battle’s mingled din,
Is the struggle of the human heart with the ministers of Sin;
The firm[?], the long death-grapple with the many-visaged Foe
The confronting in the silence of the fiend that will not go,
The trials with the Tempter as he whispers soft and low!
O, tell me not I may not weep to spare my manly lad;
I know that he is good and true, and therefore am I sad.
For whitest snow shall ??-wear the taint of earthly dust
The brightest-steel the first-reveal the yellow tooth of rust,
And the heart to pure affections soft is plastic to the worst.
Would God there were but death to fear for my gallant-hearted Boy!
I could give him to the stormy wave with a smile of proudest joy.
Could feel my heart expanding with a new and deeper thrill
To see him, foot to foot, close in with Want and human Ill,
And wrestle down their Titan brood with right good hand and will!
But the fell foe strikes in darkness with a venom in his dart
That can change to vile and loathly that frank and noble heart,
And on the brown unwrinkled now by any trace of time
Could burn into the withering brain the characters of crime!
God keep my darling’s footsteps from his pathway’s fatal slime!
In pleasure’s song, the social talk, and traffic’s loaded dice,
Aye in the very temple lurk some subtle germs of vice;
And many a loved one has sped on in narrowing circles whirl’d,
Who first but slightly devious met the evil of the world,
Till crash! The ruined soul went down, to the Maelstrom; center hurled!
But God who gave me mother-pangs will give me mother hope,
And a gate of right-endeavor for my brave young Journies ope;
The love I bear him ever, and the lessons I have taught,
Shall be with him like a guardian to hint some holy thought,
Till the Tempter is exorcised and the vital work is wrought.
Go, Boy into the noisy world, the hurry and the moil
Put thy hand and heart into the task, and dignify thy toil.
One little ring of silence shall be round thee with its calm
While thy prayer of love and purity goes upward like a psalm,
And all thy heart shall leap again as on thy Mother’s arm!
George Shepard Burleigh
