Explore "Mother" by Gilbert Parker on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
She gave me courage when I weakly said, / "O see how drifting, derelict, am I!
The tide runs counter, and the wind is high; / I see no channel through the rocks ahead.
My arm is impotent; what worth to trim / The bending sails! Look, I shall quaff a cup / To Fate, while the wild ocean swallows up / The shipwrecked youth, the man who lives in him."
She said: "But thou hast valour, dear, too much / For such as this; thou hast grave embassy, / Given with thy birth; would'st thou thine honour smutch
With coward failing? Dear son, breast the sea."
Firm-purposed from that hour, through wind and wave, / I brought my message till thou shelter gave.