There is one universal word which all babies instinctively sound in every language and that is ‘mama’. It produces a bond the like of which there is no other.

Women are hard-wired by Nature to nurture and raise. Along the human chain of generations, we would wish that every infant has depended on this woman, found shelter within her arms, food within her breast and the confidence to experience life and all its wonders from her love.

Whether we understand it or recognise it, it is women who have shaped the course and journey of humanity.

It is true, that mothering, the maternal instinct, comes in all shapes and shades and sizes. Some women find it difficult and others easy. Society with its norms and ever-readiness to make all conform, places pressures and difficulties in the paths of many. Families may not all be harbours of milk and honey but in this volume we take a different view.

Here we journey with our classic poets from Christina Georgina Rossetti and Thomas Hardy to Frances W. Harper and Kipling, not only the ways, the wonders and the women who take on the responsibility to raise children no matter the problems or dangers to themselves, but also the difficulties and sometimes desperate tragedies that motherhood can involve.

We hope these poems inspire every generation to reach out and better themselves and those around. This is our tribute to mothers everywhere.

1 - 50 Shades of Mothers - An Introduction

2 - The Bravest Battle by Joaquin Miller

3 - The Hand That Rocks The Cradle by William Ross Wallace

4 - Mama's Mama by Anonymous

5 - Sonnets Are Full of Love by Christina Rossetti

6 - Mother O' Mine by Rudyard Kipling

7 - My Mother by Ann Taylor

8 - My Mother Dear by Samuel Lover

9 - To My Mother by Christina Georgina Rossetti

10 - My Mother by Francis Ledwidge

11 - To My Mother by Lucretia Maria Davidson

12 - Shall We Not Love Thee Mother Dear by Henry Williams Baker

13 - Mother's Eyes by Mary D. B. Hull

14 - My Mother's Hands by Anonymous

15 - I Am Your Mother by Daniel Sheehan

16 - The Bedtime Kiss by Anonymous

17 - To A Little Invisible Being by Anna Laetitia Barbauld

18 - Infant Sorrow by William Blake

19 - Babies Don't Keep - Anonymous

20 - Songs From Prince Lucifer II. Mother Song by Alfred Austin

21 - Untitled by Alice Carey

22 - The Modern Mother by Alice Meynell

23 - Mother's Treasures by Frances Ellen Watkins

24 - Monologue Of A Mother by D. H. Lawrence

25 - Mother & Daughter (Extract) by Augusta Weber

26 - The Jigalo's Son by Jean Graham

27 - Somebody's Mother by Anonymous

28 - To My Mother by Edgar Allan Poe

29 - To Mother by Marina Ivanova Tsvetaeva

30 - The Mother Of God by William Butler Yeats

31 - San Lorenzo Giustiniani's Mother by Alice Meynell

32 - To a Young Lady Whose Mother Was Insane by Lucretia Maria Davidson

33 - Mothers of Men by Edwin J. Ellis

34 - The Slave Girl's Address to Her Mother by Sarah Louisa Forten

35 - The Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother by John Greenleaf Whittier

36 - The Slave Mother by Frances E. W. Harper

37 - The Mother's Son by Rudyard Kipling

38 - Mother's Day Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe

39 - The Mother by May Herschel-Clarke

40 - The Young Mother by Katharine Tynan

41 - Mother and Poet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

42 - Pensive on Her Dead Gazing by Walt Whitman

43 - On Receipt Of My Mother's Picture by William Cowper

44 - The Sailor's Mother by William Wordsworth

45 - The Old Arm Chair by Eliza Cook

46 - My Mother's Kiss by Frances E. W. Harper

47 - The Mother's Grave by Peter John Allen

48 - Where She Goes She Is Not Gone by Daniel Sheehan

49 - The Virgin Mother by D. H. Lawrence

50 - A Legend of Brittany by James Russell

51 - The Mother Mourns by Thomas Hardy