O MY stern mother, aye, in that name loved, Who gave me life and all its greenest fields, And yet to counterchange the simple joy Gave me this braih, whose luck it seems to be Ever to labour like a winnowing drudge, But blind, unknowing if it beat in vain, Unknowing what is truth, for the secret truth Straining in pallor all my waking hours, And even in dreams with worse shadow encircled, How this late noonday lights your sibyl's brow! For now so calm and tender rest the pastures, And now so sweet the distant sun looks down, And russet lands lie gleaming, so serene They colour to the plough -- your thought's known there. The patient ploughing horses, mates so kind, In whose white foreheads surely wisdom lives Unquestioned, in this hour bring me to tears And I must shield my eyes and turn away. Mysterious mother, I in your strange glances Have long been wandering lonely; now I see The earth new dug, how clean and quiet lying! And since I find my life driven on, on, on Like poor hare running till her heart is broken, Nor do you check the fiends, if fiends they are, Now show them as my foolish dreams, if dreams, I long to hide me deep in your brown earth, That will not ask whose is the flesh it turns To its own likeness, but with vast good will Receives, and bids be calm as it is calm. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE THREE ENEMIES by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI THE ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH: BOOK 2. DIET by JOHN ARMSTRONG SEVEN HONEST MEN by MARTIN BENSON HUSBANDMAN'S SONG, FR. KING RENE'S HONEYMOON by GORDON BOTTOMLEY WAS HE HENPECKED? by PHOEBE CARY CHELSEA, 1860 by ARTHUR CLEVELAND COXE TO SOME WHO HAVE FALLEN by MORAY DALTON |