(Written for Maltby Family First Feunion at Branford)
“A Spartan mother!” do they say
Who sees New England’s coasts of gray?
“A Spartan mother!” they exclaim,
And hasten back to whence they came.
So to the child of warmer birth
May seem this rugged bit of earth;
Unsmiling, stern, forbidding, -- yea,
Repellant, with its skies of gray.
But We, who know and love to trace
Each line upon our Mother’s face,
We know, as loving children should,
Her every phase and trait and mood.
We know her iron-bound coasts that ring
To Oceans’s age-old buffeting;
Unconquerable, squared to “face the front,”
And take – of what may come – the brunt.
We know her gentle inland hills;
The merry topaz brook which fills
Our leafy cup as we lie and dream
Long hours away beside its stream,
We know her deep pine woods whose trees
Murmur and breathe in the keen salt breeze
While out from the pine needles’ sheltering,
The scent of the Mayflower tells of spring.
We know the harvest fields, and the moon
Which tells of a winter coming soon.
We know the ice fringed marsh and shore –
These things we know, and far, far more.
We know the children our Mother has reared –
World-wide respected, and honored and feared.
Where’er has been danger, or work to be done,
There has been, and shall be, a New England son.
Saints soldiers and statesmen, where’er there is need,
Some child of New England stands ready to lead,
For the right; for the faith, for the weak against strong.
Glad to die, if in dying they vanquish some wrong.
“A Spartan mother!” Yes, and we
Accept the title reverently,
Rejoicing in her qualities
Wholesome and keen as an ocean breeze.
And so from North and South and West
Home we came at last to rest,
To the land we love beyond all other
To our New England – Spartan mother!
