From the Newark Evening Star, August 12, 1915. By Margaret Howard.
Great poets have sung in high praises
Of mothers with silvery locks,
Of mothers who sat in the corner,
With mending or darning the socks.
They’ve sung of the old, wrinkled faces,
Of hands that were toilworn and old;
They’ve sung of the blessed old mothers
Now gone to the heavenly fold.
But I sing of the glorious mother
Whose hair is still wavy and brown,
With hardly a glint of the silver
In the braids of her hallowing crown;
The mother who still loves a party,
Who dances as well as her girls,
And who proudly keeps step to the music
When the bright suffrage banner unfurls.
The mother who sat in the corner
Was all well enough in her day,
But old Father Time marches onward,
And now other notions hold sway.
The mother who sat in the corner
Had none of the helps we have now;
She had to do all her own canning
And spin, weave and milk her own cow.
It’s true she did not love club meetings
In the days of the long, long ago;
It’s also quite true she’d no auto
And never saw one picture show.
She didn’t clean house with a vacuum,
She didn’t have electric lights.
(For all they had then was the candle
And tallow dips for the dark nights).
So while poets dwell on the praises
Of the mothers of days now gone by,
Let me sing of the present-day mother,
With the sparkle of youth in her eye.
Let me sing of the well-informed mother,
Who keeps young with her girls and her boys;
Who understands all of their sorrows
And gladly shares all of their joys.
Let me sing of the up-to-date mother,
Who follows the ball games and sports,
Who not only reads of the fashions,
But the war news and market reports;
Who loves to romp with her grand-kiddies—
Oh, loud should her praises be sung!
The best chum of all the long ages—
My mother, so splendidly young!