The Light in Mother’s Eyes
Dear beacon of my childhood’s day,
The lodestar of my youth,
A mingled glow of tenderest love,
And firm unswerving truth,
I’ve wandered far o’er East and West,
’Neath many stranger skies,
But ne’er I’ve seen a fairer light
Than that in mother’s eyes.
In childhood, when I crept to lay
My tired head on her knee,
How gently shone the mother-love
In those dear eyes on me,
And when in youth my eager feet
Roamed from her side afar,
Where’er I went, that light divine
Was aye my guiding star.
In hours when all life’s sweetest buds
Burst into dewy bloom;
In hours when cherished hopes lay dead,
In sorrow and in gloom;
In evening’s hush, or morning’s glow,
Or in the solemn night,
Those mother eyes still shed on me
Their calm unchanging light.
Long since the patient hands I loved
Were folded in the clay,
And long have seemed the lonely years,
Since mother went away,
But still, I know she waits for me
In fields of Paradise,
And I shall reach them yet, led by
The light in mother’s eyes.
Maud’s poem can be read in remembrance of all the mothers who have left us, but are still leading us.
Photo: Maud's mother, Clara Woolner Macneill (1853-1876), from The Lucy Maud Montgomery Album
Poem: The Poetry of Lucy Maud Montgomery
