(That sweetest thing
Brimful of bliss)

Sets all the throng
Of birds a-wooing,
Billing and cooing,-

Your Valentine

Sings you a song,
Gives you a kiss.

1880

More shower than shine

Brings sweet St. Valentine;
Warm shine, warm shower,

Bring up sweet flower on flower.
Through shower and shine

Loves you your Valentine,

Through shine, through shower,

Through summer's flush, through autumn's fading

hour.

1881

Too cold almost for hope of Spring

Or first fruits from the realm of flowers,
Your dauntless Valentine, I bring

One sprig of love, and sing

"Love has no Winter hours."

If even in this world love is love

(This wintry world which felt the Fall),

What must it be in heaven above

Where love to great and small

Is all in all?

1882

My blessed Mother dozing in her chair

On Christmas Day seemed an embodied Love, A comfortable Love with soft brown hair

Softened and silvered to a tint of dove;

A better sort of Venus with an air

Angelical from thoughts that dwell above; A wiser Pallas in whose body fair

Enshrined a blessed soul looks out thereof. Winter brought holly then; now Spring has brought Paler and frailer snowdrops shivering;

And I have brought a simple humble thought

I her devoted duteous Valentine

A lifelong thought which thrills this song I sing,
A lifelong love to this dear Saint of mine.

1883

A world of change and loss, a world of death,
Of heart and eyes that fail, of laboring breath,
Of pains to bear and painful deeds to do:-
Nevertheless a world of life to come

And love; where you're at home, while in our home
Your Valentine rejoices, having you.

1884

Another year of joy and grief,

Another year of hope and fear:

O Mother, is life long or brief?
We hasten while we linger here.

But, since we linger, love me still

And bless me still, O Mother mine, While hand in hand we scale life's hill, You guide, and I your Valentine.

1885

All the Robin Redbreasts

Have lived the winter through,
Jenny Wrens have pecked their fill
And found a work to do;
Families of Sparrows

Have weathered wind and storm
With Rabbit on the stony hill
And Hare upon her form.

You and I, my Mother,

Have lived the winter through,
And still we play our daily parts
And still find work to do;
And still the cornfields flourish,

The olive and the vine,

And still you reign my Queen of Hearts

And I'm your Valentine.

1886

Winter's latest snowflake is the snowdrop flower,

Yellow crocus kindles the first flame of the Spring,

At the time appointed, at that day and hour,
When life reawakens and hope in everything.

Such a tender snowflake in the wintry weather,

Such a feeble flamelet for chilled St. Valentine,— But blest be any weather which finds us still together, My pleasure and my treasure, O blessed Mother mine.

By permission of The Macmillan Company.

CHILD AND MOTHER

BY EUGENE FIELD *

O MOTHER-MY-LOVE, if you'll give me your hand,
And go where I ask you to wander,

I will lead you away to a beautiful land —
The Dreamland that's waiting out yonder.
We'll walk in a sweet-posie garden out there
Where moonlight and starlight are streaming
And the flowers and birds are filling the air
With fragrance and music of dreaming.

There'll be no little tired-out boy to undress,
No questions or cares to perplex you;
There'll be no little bruises or bumps to caress,
Nor patching of stockings to vex you.
For I'll rock you away on a silver-dew stream,
And sing you asleep when you're weary,
And no one shall know of our beautiful dream
But you and your own little dearie.

And when I am tired I'll nestle my head

In the bosom that's soothed me so often,
And the wide-awake stars shall sing in my stead
A song which our dreaming shall soften.

So Mother-my-Love, let me take your dear hand,
And away through the starlight we'll wander-
Away through the mist to the beautiful land-
The Dreamland that's waiting out yonder!
*By courtesy of Charles Scribner's Sons.

THE MERCHANT

BY RABINDRANATH TAGORE *

Imagine, mother, that you are to stay at home and I to travel into strange lands.

Imagine that my boat is ready at the landing, fully laden.

Now think well, mother, before you say what I shall bring for you when I come back.

Mother, do you want heaps of gold?

There by the banks of golden streams, fields are full of golden harvest.

And in the shade of the forest path the golden champa flowers drop on the ground.

I will gather them all for you in many hundred. baskets.

Mother do you want pearls as big as the rain-drops of autumn?

I shall cross to the pearl island shore.

There in the early morning light pearls tremble on the meadow flowers, pearls drop on the grass, and