A VALENTINE FOR MARGARET

THE REDDEST ROSE IS FOR MARGARET

Thinking of my mother and wishing I could  present to her  a gift : a sort of  bouquet of poesie.  That is after all one of her life long gifts to me. 

 Although the actual conditions of our  life in Pawtucket were poor; the atmosphere that my mother Margaret created was rich -- it is what people now call cultural wealth. She had that in spades, and she cultivated and added to it daily.  She never tired of detailing  Ireland's rights and England's wrongs.  So much so I still find my self most recently arguing back to the  television series on Victoria --especially when it tries to sweeten her attitudes towards Ireland and Scotland.  However my mother did prize the English poets  and did  enjoy and often sing some old English song.  One of them I have  copied here:
Another earlier way of saying it's TWILIGHT TIME. You can hear it sung on YOU TUBE.

Gloaming | Definition of Gloaming by Merriam-Webster

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gloaming

The roots of the word trace to the Old English word for twilight, "glōm," which is akin to "glōwan," an Old English verb meaning "to glow." In the early 1800s, English speakers looked to Scotland again and borrowed the now-archaic verb gloam, meaning "to become twilight" or "to grow dark."

IN THE GLOAMIN'

In the gloaming, oh my darling
When the lights are soft and low
And the quiet shadows, falling,
Softly come and softly go
When the trees are sobbing faintly
With a gentle unknown woe
Will you think of me and love me,
As you did once, long ago
In the gloaming, oh my darling
Think not bitterly of me
Though I passed away in silence
Left you lonely, set you free
For my heart was tossed with longing
What had been could never be
It was best to leave you thus, dear,
Best for you, and best for me
In the gloaming, oh my darling
When the lights are soft and low
Will you think of me, and love me
As you did once long ago


I was always puzzled  by this song.  It is a song about longing and holding onto  that languorous feeling  long  after you have let go of the person who inspired it. The singer still addresses the absent one as darling and dear,  She refuses to let  bitterness or regret enter the  picture. At least the memory must always be untarnished even if the  subject of that memory had to be shorn.

I have written often of the tremendous power the sons and lyrics of Tom Moore held for my mother especially when they  were put to music and sung by a  great Irish  tenor like John McCormack, 

I was reminded of that recently when I watched again  the incredible tribute to the excesses of mother-love  directed and written  by Martin McDonough.  It is called "Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing Missouri" but it is the song that  plays under the opening and closing credits that gives the game of  Irish mother idolatry away.

We hear Tom Moore's LAST ROSE OF SUMMER sung by the soprano Renee Fleming

Last Rose of Summer 'Tis the last rose of summer, Left blooming alone; All her lovely companions are faded and gone; No flow'r of her kindred, No rosebud is nigh To reflect back her blushes, Or give sigh for sigh. I'll not leave thee, thou lone one, To pine on the stem; since the lovely are sleeping, Go, sleep thou with them; Thus kindly I scatter Thy leaves o'er the bed Where thy mates of the garden Lie senseless and dead. So soon may I follow, When friendships decay, And from love's shining circle The gems drop away! When true hearts lie wither'd, And fond ones are flown, Oh! who would inhabit This bleak world alone?

That movie is about a mother who is driven mad by the brutal rape and murder of her young daughter. The movie asks dramatically the question posed in the last lines of the song:
WHO WOULD INHABIT THIS BLEAK WORLD ALONE?
She was not violent, but my mother shared that movie mother's fierce love for her daughters. She was a lioness. I recall her throwing out of our tenement any social worker who advised her to place me and my sisters in state care.
My mother was first and last a poet, an Irish BARD
So we must end the bouquet with a special poem by her favorite Yeats

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

I don't know if any man ever loved  "the pilgrim soul" in Margaret; the love lives of our parents are an impenetrable mystery to their children.  I do know that she had a pilgrim heart  and that through poetry she tried to pass that on to me.

SO FAITH, HOPE, LOVE  REMAIN, THESE THREE;

BUT THE GREATEST OF THESE IS LOVE. (Cor:13,13)