In this intimate address to a dear friend, Julia Ward Howe dismisses the idea that she ever deliberately crafted a poem. People often urged her to compose for celebrations or stately events, but she turned them away, feeling she had no power to bless or curse on demand. The words, she insists, are not truly hers—they come from a master whose whisper she simply obeys. Yet her life runs to rhythm and rhyme all the same. The heart of the poem is a quiet confession: a thought grows inside her, like a child, deepening along with her soul. It waits in silence, often painfully, until its hour arrives. When it finally sees the light, she looks at it with mingled smiles and tears, never quite able to call it perfect. These private, soul-born children she usually hides away, but here she entrusts them to her friend, asking for a kind of baptism. The mood is one of reverent humility and maternal tenderness, treating creativity not as a craft to be mastered but as a mysterious, inevitable birth.
Mother Mind — Summary
I never made a poem, dear friend-- I never sat me down, and said, This cunning brain and patient hand Shall fashion something to be read. Men often came to me, and prayed I should indite a fitting verse For fast, or festival, or in Some stately pageant to rehearse. (As if, than Balaam more endowed, I of myself could bless or curse.)
Reluctantly I bade them go, Ungladdened by my poet-mite; My heart is not so churlish but Its loves to minister delight.
But not a word I breathe is mine To sing, in praise of man or God; My Master calls, at noon or night, I know his whisper and his nod.
Yet all my thoyghts to rhythms run, To rhyme, my wisdom and my wit? True, I consume my life in verse, But wouldst thou know how that is writ?
'T is thus--through weary length of days, I bear a thought within my breast That greatens from my growth of soul, And waits, and will not be expressed.
It greatens, till its hour has come, Not without pain, it sees the light; 'Twixt smiles and tears I view it o'er, And dare not deem it perfect, quite.
These children of my soul I keep Where scarce a mortal man may see, Yet not unconsecrate, dear friend, Baptismal rites they claim of thee.