Children, do you love your mother
And fill her heart with cheer?
Do you love her as you do no other,
And heed her loving words so dear?

If your mother is alive today,
Did you kiss her this morning?
Before you left her for the day,
Did you listen to her warning?

“Do not stay out late my child.”
Did you fill her heart with pure gladness,
And prize her when she smiled,
Or snarl and bring her sadness?

Do you scatter flowers on her way
By love and honest truth
To be to her a blessing every day
And make you a loyal child in youth?

We should always love our mothers dear
For she is our best and truest friend.
We should obey her while she is here
For she is faithful to the end.

Give her something nice today,
As a token of your love for her.
Today was set apart, ‘tis Mother’s Day,
And you surely should remember her.

Try every day to be more loyal
Than you ever were before,
And make her glad and joyful.
Tomorrow may find her on another shore.

But if your mother lives not today,
You should think of her in prayer,
And kneel down to God to pray
That you may meet her over there.

Travis E. Donald

Addendum: Travis Elizabeth Donald was my mother, born August 30, 1912. She died March 5th, 1993 of a sudden onset of acute adult leukemia.

I know she wrote this poem when she was still a child, but her exact age at the time is not recorded. Even as a young person, she had a natural talent for rhyme, but it appears as though she had not yet fully learned poetic meter and rhythm at the time she composed these verses. Polished or not, this sweet admonition is a touching reminder for each of us, made all the more poignant in light of the knowledge that Travis lost her own mother to tuberculosis–orphaned at a tender age.