OUR Mother, loved of all thy sons
So dear, they die, not dying for thee;
Yet are thy fondest, tenderest ones
Thy wanderers far at sea.

Life-long the bitter blue they stem,

Till custom makes it almost fair; Sweet grow the splintering gales to them, The icy gloom, the scorching glare.

But thy dear eyes, which shine for all, They see not, save through homesick tears,

Or when thy smile, through battle-pall,

Pays death and all their painful years.

Fair freedom's gospel soundeth now Through softer lips than those of steel; Rust gathers on the iron prow,

And shore weeds clog the resting keel;

To-day thou askest life, not death;

Our lives, for life and death, are thine: Sweet are long years, and peaceful breath, And sunny age beneath its vine;

But there are those that deem more fair
(O Mother, seen at last again !)
That smile the dying see thee wear,
Choosing thine own among the slain.

Yet, being thine, we shall be brave,

And, being thine, we will be true;

O To lie in long grasses!

O to dream of the plain!

Where the west wind sings as it passes
A weird and unceasing refrain;

Where the rank grass wallows and tosses,
And the plains' ring dazzles the eye;
Where hardly a silver cloud bosses
The flashing steel arch of the sky.

To watch the gay gulls as they flutter
Like snowflakes and fall down the sky,
To swoop in the deeps of the hollows,
Where the crow's-foot tosses awry,
And gnats in the lee of the thickets
Are swirling like waltzers in glee

To the harsh, shrill creak of the crickets, And the song of the lark and the bee.

O far-off plains of my west land!
O lands of winds and the free,
Swift deer my mist-clad plain!
From my bed in the heart of the forest,
From the clasp and the girdle of pain
Your light through my darkness passes;
To your meadows in dreaming I fly
To plunge in the deeps of your grasses,
To bask in the light of your sky!

THE MEADOW LARK

A BRAVE little bird that fears not God, A voice that breaks from the snow-wet clod

With prophecy of sunny sod,

Set thick with wind-waved goldenrod.

From the first bare clod in the raw, cold spring,

From the last bare clod, when fall winds sting,

The farm-boy hears his brave song ring,

And work for the time is a pleasant thing.