dots-menu
×

Home  »  A Library of American Literature  »  The Two Mothers

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

The Two Mothers

By Epiphanius Wilson (1845–1916)

[Born in Liverpool, England, 1845. Died in Bronxville, N. Y., 1916.]

FOR fondling arm, warm breast, and life’s sweet tide,

What dost thou to thy mother make return?

Some madcap girl can win thee from her side;

Few tears, at best, hast thou above her urn.

Only to Earth, thy mother, art thou just:

To her thou givest all within thy power,

Thy life, thy breath, thyself,—a pinch of dust,

To star her bosom with a summer flower.

The Atlantic Monthly. 1889.