a musical interlude

This is a little different from the kinds of things I usually share here, but I recently came across two songs that readers might appreciate.

First, with thanks to

The Mothering Spirit Newsletter

, a song of St. Anselm:

Jesus, like a mother you gather your people to you;  
you are gentle with us as a mother with her children.
Often you weep over our sins and our pride,  
tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgement.
You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds,  
in sickness you nurse us, and with pure milk you feed us…

And second, a hymn I heard for the first time on Palm Sunday. The second stanza reduced me to a puddle of fourth-trimester feelings:

Sweet were his words and kind his look,
When mothers round him pressed;
Their infants in his arms he took,
And on his bosom blessed.
Safe from the world's alluring harms,
Beneath his watchful eye,
Thus in the circle of his arms
May we for ever lie.

(It can be sung to the tune KINGSFOLD which I always mistake for kingsfoil.)