Page:Poems Sigourney, 1834.pdf/86

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"It may be Autumn, yea Winter, with the woman,—but with the mother, as a mother, it is always Spring." Sermon of the Rev. Thomas Cobbet, at Lynn, 1665.

an aged woman bow To weariness and care, Time wrote his sorrows on her brow And 'mid her frosted hair.

Hope, from her breast had torn away Its rooting scathed and dry, And on the pleasures of the gay She turned a joyless eye.

What was it that like sunbeam clear O'er her wan features run, As pressing toward her deafened ear I named her absent son?

What was it? Ask a mother's breast Through which a fountain flows Perennial, fathomless and blest, By winter never froze.

What was it? Ask the King of kings, Who hath decreed above That change should mark all earthly things, Except a mother's love.