Lucy Maud Montgomery lost her mother when she was not yet two years old. No doubt, growing up without a mother informed some of her creation of Anne Shirley.
In celebration of Mother's Day, here is a poem by L.M. Montgomery.
Dear beacon of my childhood’s day,
The lodestar of my youth,
A mingled glow of tenderest love,
And firm unswerving truth,
I’ve wandered far o’er East and West,
’Neath many stranger skies,
But ne’er I’ve seen a fairer light
Than that in mother’s eyes.
In childhood, when I crept to lay
My tired head on her knee,
How gently shone the mother-love
In those dear eyes on me,
And when in youth my eager feet
Roamed from her side afar,
Where’er I went, that light divine
Was aye my guiding star.
In hours when all life’s sweetest buds
Burst into dewy bloom;
In hours when cherished hopes lay dead,
In sorrow and in gloom;
In evening’s hush, or morning’s glow,
Or in the solemn night,
Those mother eyes still shed on me
Their calm unchanging light.
Long since the patient hands I loved
Were folded in the clay,
And long have seemed the lonely years,
Since mother went away,
But still, I know she waits for me
In fields of Paradise,
And I shall reach them yet, led by
The light in mother’s eyes.
