Classic Poem

" POOR mother!" 'Twas the first thing thought or said,
Voice of who knows how many million hearts,
When the news came that her brave boy was dead, —
That child of hopes, that youth of princely parts.

Gentle and graceful.... bright and brave and gay;
Whose brief life all of love and praise had won
That within compass of its winning lay —
Who was all mother could have wished her son.

Fair-dawning day by swift eclipse so crossed,
And by an ambushed savage's stray dart!
Rich freight of hope and love so early lost,
Left but to salvage of a mother's heart!

Talk not of plots and plans that, ripening slow,
Are by this death struck down with blast and blight;
We have no thought but for that mother's woe,
The darkness of that childless widow's night!

" How many hundred unknown mothers mourn
Slain sons? Why should this one our hearts so stir?"
Because, set high, we see her crown of thorn,
Feel with all mothers when we feel with her.

" God help her!" — so our prayers begin and end,
Knowing her fortune's fall, her high hope's close, —
And gently, Time, bring death, that, like a friend,
Shall lay her down to share her boy's repose.