Sweet sleep, with soft down
Weave thy brows an infant crown!
Sweet sleep, angel mild,
Hover over my happy child. [ William Blake ]

Mysterious to all thought,
A mother's prime of bliss,
When to her eager lips is brought
Her infant's thrilling kiss. [ Keble ]

The watchful mother tarries nigh,
Though sleep has clos'd her infant's eye. [ Keble ]

But what am I? An infant crying in the night;
An infant crying for the light;
And with no language but a cry. [ Alfred Tennyson ]

O happy unowned youths! your limbs can bear
The scorching dog-star and the winter's air,
While the rich infant, nursed with care and pain,
Thirsts with each heat and coughs with every rain! [ Gay ]

An infant when it gazes on the light,
A child the moment when it drains the breast,
A devotee when soars the Host in sight,
An Arab with a stranger for a guest,
A sailor when the prize has struck in fight,
A miser filling his most hoarded chest,
Feel rapture; but not such true joy are reaping
As they who watch over what they love while sleeping. [ Byron ]

Sweet babe, in thy face Soft desires I can trace.
Secret joys and secret smiles. Little pretty infant wiles. [ William Blake ]

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other. [ Bacon ]

The wise man is but a clever infant, spelling letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic book, the lexicon of which lies in eternity. [ T. Carlyle ]

The mother forms the first rudiments of the infant mind, and instills into the infant bosom the first principles of virtuous action. [ J. Iredell ]

The mother begins her process of training with the infant in her arms. It is she who directs, so to speak, its first mental and spiritual pulsations; she conducts it along the impressible years of childhood and youth, and hopes to deliver it to the rough contests and tumultuous scenes of life, armed by those good principles which her child has received from maternal care and love. [ D. Webster ]

The first being that rushes to the recollection of a soldier or a sailor, in his heart's difficulty, is his mother; she clings to his memory and affection in the midst of all the f orgetf ulness and hardihood induced by a roving life; the last message he leaves is for her; his last whisper breathes her name. The mother, as she instills the lessons of piety and filial obligation into the heart of her infant son, should always feel that her labor is not in vain. She may drop into the grave, but she has left behind her influences that will work for her. The bow is broken, but the arrow is sped, and will do its ofiice. [ A. H. Motte ]

The love of a mother is never exhausted; it never changes, it never tires. A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands; but a mother's love endures through all; in good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world's condemnation, a mother still loves on, and still hopes that her child may turn from his evil ways, and repent; she still remembers the infant smiles that once filled her bosom with rapture, the merry laugh, the joyful shout of Iris childhood, the opening promise of his youth; and she can never be brought to think him all unworthy. [ W. Irving ]

Mother! How many delightful associations cluster around that word! The innocent smiles of infancy, the gambols of boyhood, and the happiest hours of riper years! When my heart aches and my limbs are weary travelling the thorny path of life, I sit down on some mossy stone, and closing my eyes on real scenes, send my spirit back to the days of early life; I feel afresh my infant joys and sorrows, till my spirit recovers its tone, and is willing to pursue its journey. But in all these reminiscences my mother rises; if I seat myself upon my cushion, it is at her side; if I sing, it is to her ear; if I walk the walls or the meadows, my little hand is in my mother's, and my little feet keep company with hers; when my heart bounds with its best joy, it is because at the performance of some task, or the recitation of some verses, I receive a present from her hand. There is no velvet so soft as a mother's lap, no rose so lovely as her smile, no path so flowery as that imprinted with her footsteps. [ Bishop Thomson ]