Hands Of Beauty

How beautiful are the hands
Of an old mother!
How sweet, with love-bought incense
Of the service they have given.
True heart lines are the wrinkles furrowed
In smoothing of the way for others.
Memory-hallowed are the scars acquired
In serving trustful hands that groped,
Through helpless years, for hers.
And, just as those small hands reached up to her,
So hers one day will lift to God;
And, clinging closely, she will walk, serene,
To her eternal home.

^__Caroline Cain Durkee

Contemporary Kansas Poetry
Helen Rhoda Hoopes
page 53
(Kansas City: Joseph D. Havens Company. 1927)