The Mother’s Return
Dorothy Wordsworth
1771 to 1855
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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.