Longing And Asking Poem by Emily Pfeiffer

Mother, when we meet upon that shore,
Where I too may hope to be at rest,
Shall mine eyes behold thee evermore,
As my heart must ever love thee best?
Wilt thou claim me as I stand amazed,
While the veil still clogs my spirit-feet—
Claim me with the mother-love that gazed
From thy mortal eyes with such mild heat?
Shall I owe thee sweet obedience then?
Shall I pay thee back each foregone due?
Shall I grow a child beneath thy ken?
Or appear such haply in thy view?

There are bonds which we call bonds of flesh,
That do enter deep into the soul;
Or surround it closely, as a mesh
That must leave its impress on the whole;
So our human loves, which at their birth
Lowliest human faculties enfold,
Grow beyond the limits of this earth,
In the spirits they have helped to mould.
Spirit that has heard the call of spirit
Ever that same spirit voice should know
But I would our future might inherit
All that keeps our present life a-glow:
Not the substance only, but the form
Of the dear affections that now bind us,
That our bright eternal home be warm
As the mouldering hearths we leave behind us.

So I pray that when upon that shore
I may land and enter into rest,
I shall see thee, mother, evermore,
As my heart must ever love thee best.
All thy being, bore it not the sign
Shadowed in the woman's name—Eve, Life?
Life that she in sharing dares resign,—
Mortal weakness worsted in the strife.
Mother, shall thy children dare to doubt
That the end of perfect womanhood
Endlessly shall compass thee about,
In the reign of all things true and good?

When we stood on that white winter day,
And the sunlight, filtered through the snow,
Lighted on that white and frozen clay,
With the crown of peace upon its brow;
Who had deemed the woman pale and worn,
Gazing as they will who look their last,
Could have been a child left there to mourn,
One who seemed so early to have past.
Finely moulded, with the hair's dark sweep,
Straightly parted from the fair, still face;
Calm and grand as some diviner sleep
Held the wearied one in close embrace;
Smooth and firm, and all untouched with care,
Men had deemed that little children's cries
Should bewail thee, not the long despair
Looking from a full-grown woman's eyes.
Yet I think not that to outward ken,
In thy day of youth thou could'st have been
All complete as that I looked on then—
Awful, tender, beautiful, serene!
Fades the blossom here before the fruit
Forms upon the bough; our withered leaves—
Strength and beauty—go to feed our root;
In the dusk we gather in our sheaves.
Souls that into fuller beauty break,
Ripen on the body's slow decay;
Thus in perfect likeness none can wake,
But to look upon the perfect day.

But as such may we on high behold
Thee, the mother of our thoughts, hopes, lives;
Not as one whose clinging arms should fold
Infant forms, but when as women, wives,
Happy in ourselves and in one other,
From thyself thou badest us go free;
Then in angels' eyes thou wert a Mother,
In the highest, last, supreme degree!

Oh, how short a time he thus possessed thee—
He, the widowed! Growing great beneath
All the sore temptations that oppressed thee,
With the last thy spirit broke its sheath.
Gone the little one as went the rest,
Scattered wide, and wider over space;
Could the heart within the mother's breast
Keep on beating still in one fixed place?
All day long she hears her children's voices,—
Day or night they will not let her sleep;
Far away with this one she rejoices,—
Farther still with that one she must weep.
Surely it were better she should go,
Than live on with such divided life;
Ah, we too much wronged thee with our woe,
Standing by, sweet mother, and true wife,
When the struggle which so rent thy frame,
God, in pity, made at last to cease:
And the angel of His mercy came
With the order for thy soul's release!

Thus I wander on,—my thoughts are drawn
Blindly by the current which will set
Ever to that past which is not gone—
But alive with hope, not vain regret.
Here I pause, still praying as before,
That when I shall enter into rest,
I may see thee, mother, evermore,
At thy noblest, fullest, latest, best.