The Mother’s Return

A month, sweet Little-ones, is past
Since your dear ______ went away,
And she tomorrow will return;
Tomorrow is ______ happy day.

O blessed tidings! thoughts of joy!
The ______ heard with steady glee;
Silent he stood; then laughed amain,
And shouted, ‘Mother, come to me!’

Louder and ______ did he shout,
With witless hope to bring her near!
‘Nay, patience! patience, little boy;
Your tender mother cannot hear.’

I told of hills, and far-off towns,
And long, long vales to travel through;
He listened, puzzled, sore perplexed,
But he submits; what can he do?

No strike ______ his sister’s breast;
She wars not with the mystery
______ time and distance, night and day;
The bonds of ______ humanity.

Her joy is like an instinct, joy
Of kitten, bird, or summer fly;
She dances, runs without an aim,
She chatters in her ecstasy.

Her brother now takes ______ the note,
And echoes back his sister’s glee;
They ______ the infant in my arms,
As if to force ______ sympathy.

Then, settling into fond discourse,
We rested in ______ garden bower;
While sweetly shone the evening sun
In ______ departing hour.

We told o’er all that we had done,
Our rambles by the swift brook’s side
Far as ______ willow-skirted pool,
Where two fair swans together glide.

We ______ of change, of winter gone,
Of green leaves on ______ hawthorn spray,
Of birds that build their nests and sing.
And all ‘since Mother went away!’

To her ______ tales they will repeat,
To her our new-born tribes ______ show,
The goslings green, the ass’s colt,
The lambs ______ in the meadow go.

— But see, the evening ______ comes forth!
To bed the children must depart;
A moment’s heaviness they feel,
A sadness at the heart:

’Tis ______ — and in a merry fit
They run up ______ in gamesome race;
I, too, infected by their mood,
______ could have joined the wanton chase.

Five minutes past — and, O the change!
Asleep upon their beds they lie;
Their busy limbs in perfect rest,
And closed the ______ eye.