Mother and Child

Children, Fashion, Motherhood, Portrait: Children, Portrait: Woman

Dimensions

Image Dimensions: Henry Abercrombie
Support Dimensions: 31.8 x 24.0 cm

The following two poems on a separate letterpress page by Lord Bryon accompany the plate Mother and Child:


The Mother.

One shade the more, one ray the less
Had half impair’d the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress
Or softly lightens o’er her face,
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek and o’er that brow
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow
But tell of days in goodness spent, ⎯
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.

Lord Byron.


The Child.

Ah! may’st thou ever be what now thou art,
Nor unbeseem the promise of thy spring,
As fair in form, as warm yet pure in heart,
Love’s image upon earth without his wing,
And guileless beyond Hope’s imagining!
And surely she who now so fondly rears
Thy youth, in thee, thus hourly brightening,
Beholds the rainbow of her future years,
Before whose heavenly hues all sorrow disappears.

Lord Byron.