With Mother’s Day this month, many people want to give something back to the woman who raised them, beyond the classic scented candle.
For some families, responsibility for the preparations will fall on the most conscientious sibling, with the others scribbling their name at the bottom of a card that their more thoughtful sister or brother has bought.
So to relieve the additional burden of finding the right words to say, here are some lines you can borrow from a collection of famous poets and their celebrated works on mothers.
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To My Mother, by Edgar Allan Poe
Because I feel that, in the Heavens above,
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of “Mother,”
Therefore by that dear name I long have called you—You who are more than mother unto me,
And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you
In setting my Virginia's spirit free.
My mother—my own mother, who died early,
Was but the mother of myself; but you
Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,
And thus are dearer than the mother I knew
By that infinity with which my wife
Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.
Tintype on the Pond, by J. Lorraine Brown
Believe it or not,
the old woman said,
and I tried to picture it:
a girl,
the polished white ribs of a roast
tied to her boots with twine,
the twine coated with candle wax
so she could glide
uninterrupted across the ice —
my mother,
skating on bones.
Sonnets Are Full of Love, by Christina Rossetti
Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome
Has many sonnets: so here now shall be
One sonnet more, a love sonnet, from me
To her whose heart is my heart’s quiet home,
To my first Love, my Mother, on whose kneeI learnt love-lore that is not troublesome;
Whose service is my special dignity,
And she my loadstar while I go and come.
And so because you love me, and because
I love you, Mother, I have woven a wreath
Of rhymes wherewith to crown your honoured name:
In you not fourscore years can dim the flame
Of love, whose blessed glow transcends the laws
Of time and change and mortal life and death.
Mother, by Lola Ridge
Your love was like moonlight
turning harsh things to beauty,
so that little wry souls
reflecting each other obliquely
as in cracked mirrors...
beheld in your luminous spirit
their own reflection,
transfigured as in a shining stream,
and loved you for what they are not.
You are less an image in my mind
than a luster
I see you in gleams
pale as star-light on a gray wall...
evanescent as the reflection of a white swan
shimmering in broken water.
Poems Done on a Late Night Car, by Carl Sandburg
III. HOME
Here is a thing my heart wishes the world had more of:
I heard it in the air of one night when I listened
To a mother singing softly to a child restless and angry in the darkness.
Mother o’ Mine, by Rudyard Kipling
If I were hanged on the highest hill,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
I know whose love would follow me still,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
If I were drowned in the deepest sea,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
I know whose tears would come down to me,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
If I were damned of body and soul,
I know whose prayers would make me whole,
Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
To a Child, by Sophie Jewett
The leaves talked in the twilight, dear;
Hearken the tale they told: How in some far-off place and year,
Before the world grew old, I was a dreaming forest tree,
You were a wild, sweet bird
Who sheltered at the heart of me
Because the north wind stirred; How, when the chiding gale was still,
When peace fell soft on fear, You stayed one golden hour to fill
My dream with singing, dear. To-night the self-same songs are sung
The first green forest heard; My heart and the gray world grow young—
To shelter you, my bird.
