The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 56, June, 1862. Various

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          Listen closer. When you have done

             With woods and cornfields and grazing herds,

          A lady, the loveliest ever the sun

        Looked down upon, you must paint for me:

        Oh, if I only could make you see

          The clear blue eyes, the tender smile,

        The sovereign sweetness, the gentle grace,

        The woman's soul, and the angel's face

          That are beaming on me all the while!

           I need not speak these foolish words:

          Yet one word tells you all I would say,—

        She is my mother: you will agree

          That all the rest may be thrown away.

        Two little urchins at her knee

        You must paint, Sir: one like me,—

            The other with a clearer brow,

          And the light of his adventurous eyes

          Flashing with boldest enterprise:

        At ten years old he went to sea,—

             God knoweth if he be living now,—

           He sailed in the good ship "Commodore,"—

        Nobody ever crossed her track

        To bring us news, and she never came back.

          Ah, 'tis twenty long years and more

        Since that old ship went out of the bay

          With my great-hearted brother on her deck:

         I watched him till he shrank to a speck,

        And his face was toward me all the way.

        Bright his hair was, a golden brown,

           The time we stood at our mother's knee:

        That beauteous head, if it did go down,

          Carried sunshine into the sea!

        Out in the fields one summer night

          We were together, half afraid

          Of the corn-leaves' rustling, and of the shade

             Of the high hills, stretching so still and far,—

        Loitering till after the low little light

          Of the candle shone through the open door,

        And over the hay-stack's pointed top,

        All of a tremble, and ready to drop,

             The first half-hour, the great yellow star,

          That we, with staring, ignorant eyes,

        Had often and often watched to see

          Propped and held in its place in the skies

        By the fork of a tall red mulberry-tree,

          Which close in the edge of our flax-field grew,—

        Dead at the top,—just one branch full

        Of leaves, notched round, and lined with wool,

          From which it tenderly shook the dew

        Over our heads, when we came to play

        In its handbreadth of shadow, day after day.

          Afraid to go home, Sir; for one of us bore

        A nest full of speckled and thin-shelled eggs,—

        The other, a bird, held fast by the legs,

        Not so big as a straw of wheat:

        The berries we gave her she wouldn't eat,

        But cried and cried, till we held her bill,

        So slim and shining, to keep her still.

        At last we stood at our mother's knee.

          Do you think, Sir, if you try,

          You can paint the look of a lie?

          If you can, pray have the grace

          To put it solely in the face

        Of the urchin that is likest me:

            I think't was solely mine, indeed:

          But that's no matter,—paint it so;

           The eyes of our mother—(take good heed)—

        Looking not on the nest-full of eggs,

        Nor the fluttering bird, held so fast by the legs,

        But straight through our faces down to our lies,

        And, oh, with such injured, reproachful surprise!

          I felt my heart bleed where that glance went, as though

          A sharp blade struck through it.

                                           You, Sir, know,

        That you on the canvas are to repeat

        Things that are fairest, things most sweet,—

        Woods and cornfields and mulberry-tree,—

        The mother,—the lads, with their bird, at her knee:

          But, oh, that look of reproachful woe!

        High as the heavens your name I'll shout,

        If you paint me the picture, and leave that out.