Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO MY MOTHER'S MEMORY by WILLIAM WATSON

Poet Analysis

First Line: THIS IS THE SUMMIT, WILD AND LONE
Last Line: SHE GAVE TO ME.
Subject(s): MOTHERS;
THIS is the summit, wild and lone.
Westward the Cumbrian mountains stand.
Let me look eastward on mine own
Ancestral land.

O sing me songs, O tell me tales,
Of yonder valleys at my feet!
She was a daughter of those dales,
A daughter sweet.

Oft did she speak of homesteads there,
And faces that her childhood knew.
She speaks no more; and scarce I dare
To deem it true,

That somehow she can still behold
Sunlight and moonlight, earth and sea,
Which were among the gifts untold
She gave to me.



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