A MOTHER'S LOVE

FOR MY LADY

A father may turn his back

on his child;

brothers and sisters

may become inveterate enemies;

husbands may desert their wives

and wives their husbands.

But a mother's love endures

through all; in good repute, in

bad repute, in the face of the

world's condemnation,

a mother still loves on,

UNFORGETTABLE

and still hopes that her child may turn

from his wicked ways, and repent;

still she remembers the infant smiles

that once filled her bosom

with rapture, the merry laugh,

the joyful shout of his childhood,

the opening promise of his youth;

and she can never be brought

to think him all unworthy.-

Washington Irving

IN MY HEART

Home

Home was home then my dear,

full of kindly faces,

Home was home then,
my dear, happy for the child.

Fire and the windows bright glittered
on the moorland;

Song, tuneful song,
built a palace in the wild. Now, when day dawns on the
brow of the moorland,

Lone stands the house,
and the chimney-stone is cold.

Lone let it stand,
now the friends are all departed,

The kind hearts, the true hearts,
that loved the place of old. Spring shall come, come again,
calling up the moorfowl,

Spring shall bring the sun and rain,
bring the bees & flowers; Red shall the heather bloom
over hill and valley,

Soft flow the stream through
the even-flowing hours;

Fair the day shine as it shone
on my childhood – Fair shine the day on the
house with open door;

Birds come and cry there
and twitter in the chimney -

But I go forever and
come again no more.

Robert Louis Stevenson
BE GOOD TO YOUR MAMA
THE LIVING YEARS