The common growth of Mother Earth

Suffices me,—her tears, her mirth,

Her humblest mirth and tears.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Peter Bell. Prologue. Stanza 27.

Yet while my Hector still survives, I see

My father, mother, brethren, all, in thee.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Iliad of Homer. Book vi. Line 544.

Happy he

With such a mother! faith in womankind

Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high

Comes easy to him; and tho' he trip and fall,

He shall not blind his soul with clay.

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892): The Princess. Part vii. Line 308.

Oh, it's a snug little island!

A right little, tight little island.

Thomas Dibdin (1771-1841): The snug little Island.

A mother is a mother still,

The holiest thing alive.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): The Three Graves.

But strive still to be a man before your mother.

William Cowper (1731-1800): Connoisseur. Motto of No. iii.

Oh, when a mother meets on high

The babe she lost in infancy,

Hath she not then for pains and fears,

The day of woe, the watchful night,

For all her sorrow, all her tears,

An over-payment of delight?

Robert Southey (1774-1843): The Curse of Kehama. Canto x. Stanza 11.

Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts

And eloquence.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Regained. Book iv. Line 240.

Your ignorance is the mother of your devotion to me.

John Dryden (1631-1701): The Maiden Queen. Act i. Sc. 2.

The meek-ey'd Morn appears, mother of dews.

James Thomson (1700-1748): The Seasons. Summer. Line 47.

Sacred religion! mother of form and fear.

Samuel Daniel (1562-1619): Musophilus. Stanza 57.

Ye banks and braes o' bonny Doon,

How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?

How can ye chant, ye little birds,

And I sae weary fu' o' care?

Robert Burns (1759-1796): The Banks of Doon.

Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother,

That he might not beteem the winds of heaven

Visit her face too roughly.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act i. Sc. 2.

A mother is a mother still,

The holiest thing alive.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): The Three Graves.

The mother to her daughter spake:

"Daughter," said she, "arise!

Thy daughter to her daughter take,

Whose daughter's daughter cries."

A Distich, according to Zwingler, on a Lady of the Dalburg Family who saw her descendants to the sixth generation.

Praise enough

To fill the ambition of a private man,

That Chatham's language was his mother tongue.

William Cowper (1731-1800): The Task. Book ii. The Timepiece. Line 235.

The cold winds swept the mountain-height,

And pathless was the dreary wild,

And 'mid the cheerless hours of night

A mother wandered with her child:

As through the drifting snows she press'd,

The babe was sleeping on her breast.

Seba Smith (1792-1868): The Snow Storm.

A baby was sleeping,

Its mother was weeping.

Samuel Lover (1797-1868): The Angel's Whisper.

Where yet was ever found a mother

Who 'd give her booby for another?

John Gay (1688-1732): Fables. Part i. The Mother, the Nurse, and the Fairy.

Who ran to help me when I fell,

And would some pretty story tell,

Or kiss the place to make it well?

My mother.

Jane Taylor (1783-1824): My Mother.

Some jay of Italy,

Whose mother was her painting, hath betray'd him:

Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Cymbeline. Act iii. Sc. 4.

For all that Nature by her mother-wit

Could frame in earth.

Edmund Spenser (1553-1599): Faerie Queene. Book iv. Canto x. St. 21.