Somebody's Mother by Mary Dow Brine: The Full Poem and Its Story
Some poems used to be known by heart in every schoolroom and then slipped quietly out of sight. 'Somebody's Mother' is one of them. Children learnt it for recitation, newspapers reprinted it, often without the author's name, and plenty of people who can still say the first couplet have no idea who wrote it.
It was Mary Dow Brine, a New York writer born in the 1830s. The poem first appeared in her 1881 collection Madge, the Violet Girl, and Other Poems, and it went on to travel much further than she did.
For: the small kindness nobody else stopped for
The Poem
Somebody's Mother by Mary Dow Brine
The woman was old and ragged and gray
And bent with the chill of the Winter's day.
The street was wet with a recent snow
And the woman's feet were aged and slow.
She stood at the crossing and waited long,
Alone, uncared for, amid the throng
Of human beings who passed her by
Nor heeded the glance of her anxious eyes.
Down the street, with laughter and shout,
Glad in the freedom of "school let out,"
Came the boys like a flock of sheep,
Hailing the snow piled white and deep.
Past the woman so old and gray
Hastened the children on their way.
Nor offered a helping hand to her —
So meek, so timid, afraid to stir
Lest the carriage wheels or the horses' feet
Should crowd her down in the slippery street.
At last came one of the merry troop,
The gayest laddie of all the group:
He paused beside her and whispered low,
"I'll help you cross, if you wish to go."
Her aged hand on his strong young arm
She placed, and so, without hurt or harm,
He guided the trembling feet along,
Proud that his own were firm and strong.
Then back again to his friends he went,
His young heart happy and well content.
"She's somebody's mother, boys, you know,
For all she's aged and poor and slow.
"And I hope some fellow will lend a hand
To help my mother, you understand,
"If ever she's poor and old and gray,
When her own dear boy is far away."
And "somebody's mother" bowed low her head
In her home that night, and the prayer she said
Was "God be kind to the noble boy,
Who is somebody's son, and pride and joy!"
The Story Behind It
Brine published other poems and stories, but this is the one that outlived everything else. It was printed in school readers and passed around in newspapers for decades, and it was borrowed so freely that a later poem, 'An Act of Kindness' by David Weir, takes nearly half its lines from it.
Part of the reason it lasted is how plainly it's told. There's no moral spelled out at the start. You see the old woman at the crossing, you see the crowd going past her, and you see one boy stop. Then he says the line that gives the poem its title, and it lands because he says it to his friends and not to her.
The Reflection
What stays with me is the crowd. Nobody in it is cruel. They're just busy, and the woman is easy not to see. Most of us have been in that crowd more often than we'd like to admit, walking past someone because we were late, or because stopping felt awkward, or because surely somebody else would.
The boy doesn't do anything grand. He offers his arm, gets her across, and goes back to the snow. But he does it because he has made a connection most people don't bother to make. She's somebody's mother. Somewhere there is a person who loves her and isn't there to help.
Reading it now, I notice it from the other side too. Many of us have parents who are getting older in places we can't easily reach, and the hope in the last verses is ours as much as the boy's. We hope a stranger will be kind to them on an icy day. That hope is a good reason to be the stranger for someone else.
The Question to Sit With
Who did I walk past this week who could have done with a hand?
A Gentle Pause
If you'd like a few quiet minutes with words like these, I recorded a meditation built around reading and listening slowly.
Words for the Wall
Shop this print: Somebody's Mother
The whole poem is set in typewriter type in my Somebody's Mother print, which makes a moving gift for a mum, a grandmother or a teacher. For more on everyday kindness, there's Edgar Guest's Have You Earned Your Tomorrow and John Wesley's Do All the Good You Can.
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