O FOREST-MOTHER, I have stayed Too long away from thee; Let me come home for these few hours That from the world are free. Oh! mother, they have saddened me With all their foolish din; Lowly I knock at thy green gate; Dear mother, let me in. Down where the tumbled towers of rock Their perilous stairs have made, Holding the tough young hemlock boughs For slender balustrade, I find my pleasant home, far off From all men say and do -- Far as the world from which we flash When some swift dream breaks through. Again the grave old hemlock trees Stretch down their feathery palms, And murmur up against the blue Their solemn breath of psalms; And here my little brothers are, The sparrow and the bee, The wren that almost used to dare To perch upon my knee; The dust of sunshine under foot, The darkness over head, The sliding gleam that swings along The unseen spider's thread; The low arched path beneath the boughs, And half-way down it laid A falling fringe of sun-lit leaves Against the roof of shade; The sunshine clasping round both sides A broken cedar old, Rimming its shaft so dark and wet In green and massy gold, In hollows where the evening glooms Rest drowsily all day, In the blue shadows of the pines, Sprinkled with golden spray. Dimpled red cheeks of berries hid A wary eye discerns, And timid little pale-faced flowers Peep through the latticed ferns. O Mother, they are proud and blind Who from all these would stay; Yet do not scorn them unforgiven, But woo them day by day. Let all sweet winds from all fair dells, And whispering breath of pine, Pursue and lure the wanderer Back to thy rest divine. If I must build in Babel still Till that last summons come, Oh! call me when the hour is near, And let me die at home. 'T were sweet, I know, to stay; but so 'T were sweetest to depart, Thy cool, still hand upon my face, Thy silence in my heart. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE BEGGAR'S HOLIDAY, FR. BEGGAR'S BUSH by JOHN FLETCHER THE FINDING OF THE LYRE by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS by ALFRED TENNYSON NUPTIAL SONG by JOHN BYRNE LEICESTER WARREN ECCLESIASTICAL SONNETS: PART 3: 34. MUTABILITY by WILLIAM WORDSWORTH |