From Phyllis McGinley’s A Short Walk to the Station.

One Crowded Hour of Glorious Strife

I love my daughters with a love unfailing,
I love them healthy and I love them ailing.
I love them as sheep are loved by the shepherd,
With a fiery love like a lion or a leopard.
I love them gentle or inclined to mayhem —
But I love them warmest after eight-thirty A.M.

Oh, the peace like heaven
 That wraps me around,
Say, at eight-thirty-seven,
 When they’re schoolroom-bound,
With the last glove mated
 And the last scarf tied,
With the pigtail plaited,
 With the pincurl dried,
And the egg disparaged,
 And the porridge sneered at,
And last night’s comics furtively peered at,
The coat apprehended
 On its ultimate hook,
And the cover mended
 On the history book!

How affection swells, how my heart leaps up
As I sip my coffee from a lonely cup!
For placid as the purling of woodland waters
Is a house divested of its morning daughters.
Sweeter than the song of the lark in the sky
Are my darlings’ voices as they shriek good-by —

With the last shoe burnished
 And the last pen filled,
And the bus fare furnished
 And the radio stilled;
When I’ve signed the excuses
 And written the notes,
And poured fresh juices
 Down ritual throats,
And rummaged for umbrellas
 Lest the day grow damper,
And rescued homework from an upstairs hamper,
And stripped my wallet
 In the daily shakedown,
And tottered to my pallet
 For a nervous breakdown.

Oh, I love my daughters with a love that’s reckless
As Cornelia’s for the jewels in her fabled necklace.
But Cornelia, even, must have raised three cheers
At the front door closing on her school-bent dears.