The Mother's Song
Lord! Oh, hold in Thy hand my child,Guard by the river its playing!Send Thou Thy Spirit as comrade mild,Lest it be lost in its straying!Deep is the water and false the ground.Lord, if His arms shall the child surround,Drowned it shall not be, but living,Till Thou salvation art giving.
Mother, whom loneliness befalls,Knowing not where it is faring,Goes to the door, and its name there calls;Breezes no answer are bearing.This is her thought, that everywhereHe and Thou for it always care;Jesus, its little brother,Follows it home to mother.
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
- loneliness n.
- The condition of being lonely; solitude; seclusion.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Mother's Song is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems and Songs, Project Gutenberg ebook #6619, the Arthur Hubbell Palmer translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, The Mother's Song, in Poems and Songs (1915), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6619, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bjornson-poems-and-songs/the-mother-s-song.html, id L29232.
Form and metre
The Mother's Song is 16 lines in 2 stanzas of 8 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABABCCDD. The metre is dactylic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%).
See other poems in dactylic trimeter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABABCCDD childA · playingB · mildA · strayingB · groundC · surroundC · livingD · givingD
- 2 ABABCCDD befallsA · faringB · callsA · bearingB · everywhereC · careC · brotherD · motherD
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against dactylic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Lord! Oh, hold in Thy hand my child, | 8 | ········ |
| Guard by the river its playing! | 8 | ···/˘·/˘ |
| Send Thou Thy Spirit as comrade mild, | 8 | ···/·/·· |
| Lest it be lost in its straying! | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Deep is the water and false the ground. | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| Lord, if His arms shall the child surround, | 9 | ·······˘/ |
| Drowned it shall not be, but living, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Till Thou salvation art giving. | 8 | ··˘/˘·/˘ |
| Mother, whom loneliness befalls, | 8 | /˘·/˘˘˘/ |
| Knowing not where it is faring, | 8 | /˘····/˘ |
| Goes to the door, and its name there calls; | 9 | ········· |
| Breezes no answer are bearing. | 8 | /˘·/˘·/˘ |
| This is her thought, that everywhere | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| He and Thou for it always care; | 8 | ·····/·· |
| Jesus, its little brother, | 7 | /˘·/˘/˘ |
| Follows it home to mother. | 7 | /˘···/˘ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.