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[581] all appearances in vain, for the departed one, takes a new direction; and the love for such a mother as Charles Sumner had, may grow dearer with each coming year. Each new silver hair, slowly stealing in among the tresses of fresher days, only clothes the head with the charm of a new consecration.1 There is nothing strange that such men are passionately admired by gifted and beautiful women. The native gallantry of a fine soul, however, may often be somewhat quenched by too constant a familiarity with something that falls far below the divine ideal, for this finds its best impersonation in the gentleness which makes each man's mother a Madonna—something holier than a mere woman—something apart from the other million of women, gentle as may be the rustling of the wings of the common flock. And so, in a single life, where memory goes back fondly to this ideal that has lived so long, it finds its most expressive limnings in the indefinable grace of a gentle and beautiful mother. This, in such a man, becomes a heroine-worship, which may be as sacred in the masculine soul, and sublimer, than the dewy love of girlhood's morning.
1 A similar—nearly a parallel case—inspired these verses, addressed as a little Christmas carol, to a very venerable, but still radiantly beautiful lady, who did so much to brighten the life of the writer:
So gently has Old Father Time
Laid his cold fingers on thy head,
I fain would ring for him another chime,
For he grows young in thee—there are no dead.
His fingers now seem soft and warm;
The ice has melted from his frosty hand;
His touch passed gently o'er thy faultless form,
He must have breathed on thee from Summer Land.
And so the years go harmless by thee,
Leaving no sign but shining silver hair;
And this, thy beauty's touching coronal,
Is the sole proof he has been there.
United States Publishing Company, 1874.
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