Mother to Son

BEFORE all other things, my son,
Be sure you learn a craft:
It shall be daily bread to you
And a tower for every shaft,
When rich men die of their desires
And the rabblement is daft.

The music moving through your hands,
As cool as water flowing,
Shall wash all fevers from your blood
And keep the heart’s mill going,
Singing its twofold mystery —
Self-mastered, self-bestowing.

Young Jesus in his mother’s house
Rejoiced as carpenter;
Thought shone from every lovely grain
Of woods he tooled for her.
She loved them more than Magian gold
And memories of myrrh.

His friends were shepherds, fishermen,
Users of hands and eyes,
Whose idlest member was the tongue,
Whose books were earth and skies —
Not clever men who spoke and wrote
For plaudits, juggler-wise.

The woodsmen likewise were his friends
One dwelt on Olivet
Who could pick out a cedar’s sound
Although its roots were set
Afar, in a roaring sea of pine,
And the night were black as jet.

This woodsman’s hands had gentleness
For all shy furry things;
He got as close as mortal may
To the fluttering soul in wings,
And the secret joy of mountain flowers
And the speech of lonely springs.

It was the mob without a craft,
Tapster and tout and hind,
Worked up by clever men who wrote,
And mouths whose trade was wind,
And the rich with naught to do but rake
For evil in their mind,

Who felled that woodsman’s favorite tree
When fledged with earliest leaves,
And nailed thereon his favorite friend
Like a cullion king of thieves:
The strong and comely man of men
Like a dead crow swung from caves.

Beauty betrayed by empty minds
To most ignoble end;
The sorrows of the man who grew
A gallows for his friend;
Great poets quoted with a twist
When the battles rave and rend —

All this, too true, has been before,
And will again be done
Till men seek out a nobler mould
For the vital fire to run;
But come what may, the fault’s not yours —
You choose a craft, my son.