| Walter Murdoch (1874–1970). The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. 1918. |
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| 180. The Mother |
| | | By Nettie Palmer |
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| IN the sorrow and the terror of the nations, | |
| In a world shaken through by lamentations, | |
| Shall I dare know happiness | |
| That I stitch a baby’s dress? | |
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| So: for I shall be a mother with the mothers, | 5 |
| I shall know the mother’s anguish like the others, | |
| Present joy must surely start | |
| For the life beneath my heart. | |
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| Gods and men, ye know a woman’s glad unreason, | |
| How she cannot bend and weep but in her season, | 10 |
| Let my hours with rapture glow | |
| As the seams and stitches grow. | |
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| And I cannot hear the word of fire and slaughter; | |
| Do men die? Then live, my child, my son, my daughter! | |
| Into realms of pain I bring | 15 |
| You for joy’s own offering. | |
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