Republican Herald

POETRY.

MOTHER. HOME AND HEAVEN.
BY S. D. ANDERSON.

"The three sweetest words in the English language are Mother, Home and Heaven."

Mother;
The first fond word our hearts express,
In childhood's rosy hours
When life seems full of happiness,
As nature is of flowers
A word that manhood loves to speak
When time has placed upon his cheek,
And written on his brow.
Stern lessons of the world's untruth,
Unheeded in his thoughtless youth,
But sadly pondered now,
As time brings back, 'mid vanished years,
A mother's fondest hopes and fears.

Home,
The only Eden left untouched.
Free from the tempter's snare;
A Paradise where kindred hearts
May live without a care
A wife's glad smile is imaged here.
And eyes that never knew a tear,
Save those of happiness,
Beam on the hearts that wander back
From off the long and beaten track
Of sordid worldliness
To ask those purer joys that come.
Like angels round the hearth at home.

Heaven,
The end of all a mother's prayers,
The home of all her dreams :
The guiding star light our path
With hope's enchanting beams:
The haven for our storm tossed bark.
From out a world where wild and dark
The tempests often rise :
But still in every darksome hour,
This hope will rise with holy power,
And point us to the skies
Where Mother. Home and Heaven are seen,
Without a cloud to intervene.