COMFORT me with apples! I am sick unto death, I am sad to despair; My trouble is more than my strength is to bear; Back again to the green hills that first met my sight I come, as a child to its mother, to-night; -- Comfort me with apples! Comfort me with apples! Bring the ripe mellow fruit from the early "sweet bough," -- (Is the tree that we used to climb growing there now?) And "russets," whose cheeks are as freckled and dun As the cheeks of the children that play in the sun; -- Comfort me with apples! Comfort me with apples! Gather those streaked with red, that we named "morning-light." Our good father set, when his hair had grown white, The tree, though he said when he planted the root, "The hands of another shall gather the fruit;" -- Comfort me with apples! Comfort me with apples! Go down to the end of the orchard, and bring The fair "lady-fingers" that grew by the spring; Pale "bell-flowers," and "pippins," all burnished with gold, Like the fruit the Hesperides guarded of old; -- Comfort me with apples! Comfort me with apples! Get the sweet "junietta," so loved by the bees, And the "pearmain," that grew on the queen of the trees; And close by the brook, where they hang ripe and lush, Go and shake down the best of them all, -- "maiden's-blush;" -- Comfort me with apples! Comfort me with apples! For lo! I am sick; I am sad and opprest; I come back to the place where, a child, I was blest. Hope is false, love is vain, for the old things I sigh; And if these cannot comfort me, then I must die! Comfort me with apples! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DISCORDANTS: 1 by CONRAD AIKEN THE NIGHT COURT by RUTH COMFORT MITCHELL STANZAS WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY BROWN OF OSSAWATOMIE [DECEMBER 2, 1859] by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER CHARACTERS: SUSANNAH BARBAULD MARISSAL by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD THE WANDERER by MATHILDE BLIND THE DEAR ADVENTURER by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON |