1944
Nature, the Gentlest Mother
Composed by 
Ernst Bacon
Ernst Bacon Text by 
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson "Nature, the Gentlest Mother" can be found in the Ernst Bacon song collection Songs from Emily Dickinson: Nature Time and Space - Volume 2. Copland also set this Dickinson text in his Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson song cycle.
Text
Nature, the Gentlest Mother
by Emily Dickinson
Nature, the gentlest mother
Impatient of no child,
The feeblest or the waywardest, –
Her admonition mild
In forest and the hill
By traveller is heard,
Restraining rampant squirrel
Or too impetuous bird.
How fair her conversation,
A summer afternoon, –
Her household, her assembly;
And when the sun goes down
Her voice among the aisles
Incites the timid prayer
Of the minutest cricket,
The most unworthy flower.
When all the children sleep
She turns as long away
As will suffice to light her lamps;
Then, bending from the sky,
With infinite affection
And infiniter care,
Her golden finger on her lip,
Wills silence everywhere.
Sheet Music
Songs from Emily Dickinson: Nature, time and space Vol.2
Ernst Bacon
Velvet people
A wind like a bugle
The morns are meeker
Clover
Nature, the gentlest mother
A wind like a bugle
The morns are meeker
Clover
Nature, the gentlest mother
High