With the tenderest love does the mothering bird take good care of her helpless young brood,
gently gathering all with her soft, downy wings, and most tenderly giving them food;
and e'er drawing them in, all the love and the care in the world in those chicks is imbued,
as the whole of the race in her young is embodied, and by them again is renew'd.
And her young, for their part, can see only her face, and her love is the one thing they feel,
and the world is entirely hers to them; nothing that she doesn't show them is real;
they know nothing but what she has told them, trust nothing if she does not first it reveal;
by her gentle caress, all their cares are remov'd, and they fear neither pain nor ordeal.
How dear, then, is the mother who's also a daughter, the parent who's also a child,
to the one who both made her and then was born by her, who up and down at her has smil'd?
How for even a second could either of them to the other be unreconcil'd?
With the tenderest, deepest, profoundest of love must these two hearts be ever compil'd.
