| |
I
HER HANDS MY mother’s hands are cool and fair, | |
| They can do anything. | |
| Delicate mercies hide them there | |
| Like flowers in the spring. | |
| |
| When I was small and could not sleep, | 5 |
| She used to come to me, | |
| And with my cheek upon her hand | |
| How sure my rest would be. | |
| |
| For everything she ever touched | |
| Of beautiful or fine, | 10 |
| Their memories living in her hands | |
| Would warm that sleep of mine. | |
| |
| Her hands remember how they played | |
| One time in meadow streams,— | |
| And all the flickering song and shade | 15 |
| Of water took my dreams. | |
| |
| Swift through her haunted fingers pass | |
| Memories of garden things;— | |
| I dipped my face in flowers and grass | |
| And sounds of hidden wings. | 20 |
| |
| One time she touched the cloud that kissed | |
| Brown pastures bleak and far;— | |
| I leaned my cheek into a mist | |
| And thought I was a star. | |
| |
| All this was very long ago | 25 |
| And I am grown; but yet | |
| The hand that lured my slumber so | |
| I never can forget. | |
| |
| For still when drowsiness comes on | |
| It seems so soft and cool, | 30 |
| Shaped happily beneath my cheek, | |
| Hollow and beautiful. | |
| |
II
HER WORDS My mother has the prettiest tricks | |
| Of words and words and words. | |
| Her talk comes out as smooth and sleek | 35 |
| As breasts of singing birds. | |
| |
| She shapes her speech all silver fine | |
| Because she loves it so. | |
| And her own eyes begin to shine | |
| To hear her stories grow. | 40 |
| |
| And if she goes to make a call | |
| Or out to take a walk | |
| We leave our work when she returns | |
| And run to hear her talk. | |
| |
| We had not dreamed these things were so | 45 |
| Of sorrow and of mirth. | |
| Her speech is as a thousand eyes | |
| Through which we see the earth. | |
| |
| God wove a web of loveliness, | |
| Of clouds and stars and birds, | 50 |
| But made not any thing at all | |
| So beautiful as words. | |
| |
| They shine around our simple earth | |
| With golden shadowings, | |
| And every common thing they touch | 55 |
| Is exquisite with wings. | |
| |
| There’s nothing poor and nothing small | |
| But is made fair with them. | |
| They are the hands of living faith | |
| That touch the garment’s hem. | 60 |
| |
| They are as fair as bloom or air, | |
| They shine like any star, | |
| And I am rich who learned from her | |
| How beautiful they are. | |
| |
