To My Mother (A Poem)

I do not build a monument
Of carved white marble for your sake,
That only those who pass may read,
And only those memorial make.

My life must be the monument
I consecrate in your behalf;
My charity must carve your name,
My gentleness your epitaph.

Above this record I engrave,
No drooping figure there must be;
Straight-shouldered courage, starry eyed,
Must mark this scroll of destiny.

And may some fragments of your strength
By God’s great mystery fall on me,
That through this monument of mine,
May shine your immortality.
- Claudia Cranston

Taken from Public School Methods, Volume 5, pg. 515, Methods Company, 1921. This work is in the Public Domain.