From a Mother’s Point of View - Robert Burns's poem conveys a mother's perspective on the loss of her son

Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and whether you were fortunate enough to get to spend time with yours or were perhaps laying flowers on her grave, I hope you took the time to appreciate her somehow. While SevenPonds paid tribute to departed mothers on the holiday, today I’m looking at a poem from a mother’s point of view. As its name implies, “A Mother’s Lament,” by Robert Burns, expresses the sadness of a mother who has just lost her son:

Fate gave the word, the arrow sped,

And pierc’d my darling’s heart;

And with him all the joys are fled

Life can to me impart.

By cruel hands the sapling drops,

In dust dishonour’d laid;

So fell the pride of all my hopes,

My age’s future shade.

The mother-linnet in the brake

Bewails her ravish’d young;

So I, for my lost darling’s sake,

Lament the live-day long.

Death, oft I’ve feared thy fatal blow.

Now, fond, I bare my breast;

O, do thou kindly lay me low

With him I love, at rest!

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