The World's Mother

Woman-Saviour now we muster
To await thy advent sure,
In the cluster of thy lustre,
Come and leave the earth no more?
John Goodwyn Barmby (1842)

So when the great word ‘Mother!’ rang once more,
I saw at last its meaning and its place;
Not the blind passion of the brooding past,
But Mother - the World's Mother - come at last,
To love as she had never loved before
-To feed and guard and teach the human race.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1904)

The muse of the twentieth century we shall never know, but our children may and our grand-children certainly will. Yet we cannot help wondering what she will look like or what songs she will sing: which strings in man’s soul she will touch, and to what heights she will raise her age.
Hans Christian Andersen (1861)