p. 9 | What Your Mother Felt in the Long Ago

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 29, 1911

What Your Mother Felt in the Long Ago

THERE'S a something comes to you when you're old, When a blue-eyed baby with curls of gold Climbs up in your lap and snuggles down, As the lights in the windows across the town Flare up and twinkle across the night — A sort of holy and calm delight, A sort of feeling that now you know What your mother felt in the long ago.

When the little bit of a cuddled heap, Not quite awake and not quite asleep, With a twisting and burrowing motion lies Against your bosom with half-shut eyes, And begs for a “tory,”—“Do, mama, prease!”

There is something comes to you, times like these, That lifts you up till you sit alone With your babe in a world that is all your own.

You look away past the building-blocks, And the raggedy doll, and the wee pink socks, And the cotton rabbit and Teddy-bear, And you press a kiss on the baby’s hair, While you croon a song that your mother knew In the far-off days that she sang to you; You are just beginning to feel and know How your mother loved in the long ago.

And the sweet, sweet pain that a mother feels Gets hold of your heart as you sit, and steals To your eyes, and you kiss a wee, dimpled hand, And you wish that the baby might understand What is in your heart as you sit and croon

A lullaby to a world-old tune That shall live as long as the world shall live— But the mother-loving is always, “Give!”

You know, as you snuggle the baby form, And hold her closer and fold her warm, What no mere daughter may ever know,— What your mother felt in the long ago!

What she gave to you when you lay asleep In her arms when the shadows began to creep, And you joy to think, In a better land She will some day know that I under- stand.

— Selected.