| Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907. | | | Songs and Ballads.
The Child of the Islands (1845)
A Mother’s Love | | By Caroline Elizabeth Sarah (Sheridan) Norton (1808–1877) |
| | | THE MOTHER looketh from her latticed pane— | |
| Her Children’s voices echoing sweet and clear: | |
| With merry leap and bound her side they gain, | |
| Offering their wild field-flow’rets: all are dear, | |
| Yet still she listens with an absent ear: | 5 |
| For, while the strong and lovely round her press, | |
| A halt uneven step sounds drawing near: | |
| And all she leaves, that crippled child to bless, | |
| Folding him to her heart, with cherishing caress. | |
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| Yea, where the Soul denies illumined grace, | 10 |
| (The last, the worst, the fatallest defect;) | |
| SHE, gazing earnest in that idiot face, | |
| Thinks she perceives a dawn of Intellect: | |
| And, year by year, continues to expect | |
| What Time shall never bring, ere Life be flown: | 15 |
| Still loving, hoping,—patient, though deject,— | |
| Watching those eyes that answer not her own,— | |
| Near him, and yet how far! with him, but still alone. | |
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| Want of attraction this love cannot mar: | |
| Years of Rebellion cannot blot it out: | 20 |
| The Prodigal, returning from afar, | |
| Still finds a welcome, giv’n with song and shout! | |
| The Father’s hand, without reproach or doubt, | |
| Clasps his,—who caused them all such bitter fears: | |
| The Mother’s arms encircle him about: | 25 |
| That long dark course of alienated years, | |
| Marked only by a burst of reconciling tears! | | | | |
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