Iowa State University - Bomb Yearbook (Ames, IA)

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hitherto dumb as the bird of its future, can never lie upon the mother arm and be a boy again just fora night. In deepest despair and voiceless grief that dried every particle of tear he closed his eyes to the mockings of nature and looked into the conscious severances of his soul. How long he lay thus that summer afternoon it is not lawful to tell, but, finally, as out of the sky a song of childhood's hours sprang into his ears and soul. It was a trundle-bed song of the long ago. It came again at the evening time when the hours of a boy were tired and his spirit restless. It was the mother song in a lullaby and good night. It came with a meaning strong enough for the man, yet sweet and solaceful as for a boy. H The soul for joy unfolds her wings , And loud her lovely Sonnet sings, V- I am safe, safe at home. The 'man sprang to his feet. Everything became accordant. The glories of the child- hood mornings, the inspiriting of the corn, the clover and the refreshing of the flowers of the May, the carols of the lark, the beauty and music of the river, the voices of the mother bird, the gladsome sky and a radiant world proclaimed in melodies infinite and solacies fathomless the rightful accompaniment of that mother's soul to her long home in the skies, and the boy of the night felt the arm of the mother to be the arm of the Almighty for the man of the day. And the old proverb came true: H But it shall come to pass at evening time it shall be light.', Several days afterward this same man passed indifferently down the streets of one of our largest western cities. The bill boards announced a matinee of a play from one of the modern refreshing patches of the infinite out of the country life that God made. He instinc- tively turned with the crowd to the play to cover his grief. In the retracings of the old time songs a singer startled and aroused him to indescribable emotion as she sang: HBackward, turn backward, O time, in your Hight, Make me a child again, just for to-night! Mother come back from the echoless shore, Take me again to your heart as of yoreg Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care, Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair, Over my slumbers your loving watch keepg Rock me to sleep, mother-rock me to sleep V' How does this song come now? It seems more than a coincidence! No aisle of cathedral ever seemed more hallowed than the seat of this play house. The song continued: U Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years! I am so weary of toil and of tears- Toil without recompense, tears all in vain- Take them, and give me my childhood again! I have grown weary of dust and decay- Weary of Hinging my soul wealth away, Weary of sowing for others to reap- ' Rock me to sleep, mother-rock me to sleep ! More enduring than a wholesome laugh is a manly cry. It clarifies the soul as the snow frees the winter's air of impurities. Uncontrollable pathos swept the soul of the child- man as the music continued: Cver my heart in the days that are flown, No love like mother-love ever has shone, No other-worship abides and endures- Faithful, unselfish and patient, like yours : None like a mother can charm away pain From the sick soul and the world-weary brain 3 Slumber's soft calm o'er my heavy lids creep - Rock me to sleep, mother--rock me to sleep! 21 Ki

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tribute to its immortality and empire supreme. Oh, my son, I am just a child of the dust here, and will live more and better than a thousand years in the land of the soul. The child-man said, H Rest now, turn on my arm, and say after me the prayer you used to teach my childish ears- Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, And if I die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take. Like a tired child the mother slept upon the exchanged arm, and the mother heart ofthe man-child wooed and brooded over that life as in childhood days his life had been fostered by the hallowed breast and prayers of the fostering night hours. The breast of a woman bared to nourish her children renders every woman's personage sacred as the bared arm of a man to support the world begets supremest reverence for this HKing of men for al that ! There is a motherhood in a man's heart as in a woman's. Once in a great while the yearning of this motherhood rises to its intensest capacity and has a strength surpassing any other of earth. The truest love of man for woman, as of woman for man, has a sincere mother element that is akin to the heart of God in the wooing of the children of men to the beautiful and the good. Such a heart moved in the child-man that hour, and the troubled breaths of failing years betokened anxiety for iminent dangers. Mother and child were interchangeable. That day of marvelous impressibility, the last of hope for the life of a friend and loved one came. This boy-man, helpless to further effort and stifled by the shut-in-ness, sought the tonic of the out-doors. From the house he started down an old path made by mother's feet. A bug in the way drew him a step half aside as if to crush it. H No, you shall liveg there's enough death in the world alreadyfl And the loathsome bug became .a thing of love. Thrown upon the sod of a summer air he lost himself to be awakened by a childish voice- H Oh, Uncle Will! Look what a pretty grave in this grass. Who made that grave? HAsk God Almighty. What, Uncle Will? HWhy, that mole was made to go under the ground, just like you are made to go on top of the ground. H Oh. And the understanding of the little child seemed gratified in that H Oh. But the man said to himself, H Yes, the whole World is now a graveyard for somebody to Walk on. He turned over with his face to the sky. In grief as in love: HA man Without senti- ment is a mental cripple. However appreciative he may be, it takes forty years to know his own mother. Looking into the fathomless sky his eyes became fixed in that interminable fidelity blue of an indefinite Wonder. The fields of the boyhood neighborhood rose in a resur- rection morn of rebirthed glories-the corn in its springtime, the fields of royal clover, the flowers of life's earliest acquaintanceships appeared re-graced and the lark flew as he used years agone toward the old tree mid-field, turning his head this way and that to see if anyone were looking, and flinging music all about him. But what is all this-mother is dying! The river runs with its sparking, be-gemmed surface recalling nights and days of boyhood glee and seeming to make sincere effort anew to happify the world this day. The sky fillswith Kentucky beneflcence and the air has a human feel, but mother is dying! Into an old cedar near by five bluejays awoke him with their vociferous calls and cries. In size they are indistinguishable, but one is a mother bird. They are four times her capacity yet nourished to the full by her ministry and devotion. Four sit clustered together in silence during the intervals of her absences only the more clamorously to appeal to the life of the mother bird's instinct good. Oh, you dumb birds, these are among the last appeals for aid you will ever make through the mystery of motherhood! You must live by yourselves or die. The season of your dependency is accomplishing and you can never be a broodling again. So our fates, or something called destiny, determines that this mail, 20

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The singer sang all the long stanzas of the poem and they each seemed too short. Resolution camegro wing out of the innermost depth of the being with the concluding stanzas: H Mother, dear mother, the years have been long Since I last listened your lullaby song: Sing, then, and unto my soul it shall seem lVIanhood's years have been only a dream. Clasped to your heart in a loving embrace, With your light lashes just sweeping your face, Never hereafter to wake or to weep- Rock me to sleep, mother-rock me to sleep l This song is all the man heard that day. He was hidden in the depth of himself. -He mused on the line of the old gray poet- There is nothing greater in the world than to be the mother of men. More than creed or church, religion or philosophy is a mother soul like that in the destiny of a being. It is an inspired scripture without exposure to verbal inaccuracy. It begetsa faith in things high and eternal in both worlds. For a few individuals it surpasses precept, doctrine and congress of mothers. The spirit of genuine motherhood is fundamental to all Christian progress, civilization and eternal life. Though one cannot be a child again, yet the spirit of such motherhood is perpetual benediction dispensing its beneficences upon one's head ceaselessly. It sings lullabys in the evening time. It says, H I am here in the wakeful hours of the night. It enhances Christmas joys and the greetings of New Years. Genuine motherhood is one unending New Year's day, 1 1 se joy, inspiration and resolution multiply the real things of a man's being beyond compute and compare. it SOME BIRDS I HAVE KNOWN. SOME birds like a few men leave an immortal impression upon us. We do not need to clothe a bird with human faculties to make it interesting. Instinctive intelligence and goodness condition a royal individuality though not a personality. In acquaintanceship with birds, as with our own kind, two are a multitude, although for grandeur or expression of a hal- lelujah chorus a crowd is imperative. Under my bed window in the years that at have gone like the flowers, I knew a house Wren of unusual brilliancy. He presided over the nesting in a cozy nook aside the window sill, His mother must have called him a welcome child. He came into the world singing and never tired of the habit. When opens a day more hallowedly than the song of a bird thrust down into your slumbers? I am indebted beyond repay to this loyal attendant for several hundred new-born days and unique visions. Sometimes the soul seems to leave the body, like a mother her babe cuddled down in abandoned slumber, while it makes a useful journey to other spheres of love, and the song of the bird arouses the body before the soul's full return, and they come into the new day singing together with the morning. This wren had only a few notes but he knew them so well and sang them so soul- fully that they were always free of sameness. Things well done never grow old nor tiresome. Robert Browning got his idea of H Pippa Passes by meeting a spry' maiden coming singing along the forest path, and in his poem immortal sent her singing through the streets under the windows forever. This friend of mine in feathers had his paths through the air and the trees anear the house. Some instinctive compass known to God and the birds took him unerringly to the tops of a great lilac cluster around through the evergreens, back to the window sill, flinging music all about him. It was a delight supreme to see him coming, a ' 22