O MY stern mother, aye, in that name loved, Who gave me life and all its greenest fields, And yet to counterchange the simple joy Gave me this braih, whose luck it seems to be Ever to labour like a winnowing drudge, But blind, unknowing if it beat in vain, Unknowing what is truth, for the secret truth Straining in pallor all my waking hours, And even in dreams with worse shadow encircled, How this late noonday lights your sibyl's brow! For now so calm and tender rest the pastures, And now so sweet the distant sun looks down, And russet lands lie gleaming, so serene They colour to the plough -- your thought's known there. The patient ploughing horses, mates so kind, In whose white foreheads surely wisdom lives Unquestioned, in this hour bring me to tears And I must shield my eyes and turn away. Mysterious mother, I in your strange glances Have long been wandering lonely; now I see The earth new dug, how clean and quiet lying! And since I find my life driven on, on, on Like poor hare running till her heart is broken, Nor do you check the fiends, if fiends they are, Now show them as my foolish dreams, if dreams, I long to hide me deep in your brown earth, That will not ask whose is the flesh it turns To its own likeness, but with vast good will Receives, and bids be calm as it is calm. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THERE WAS A CHILD WENT FORTH by WALT WHITMAN HE MOURNS FOR THE CHANGE THAT HAS COME UPON HIM AND BELOVED by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS THE FROGS: HYMN OF THE INITIATES by ARISTOPHANES A HINT FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE THIRD SATIRE OF JUVENAL by PHILIP AYRES CHILD OF MARY'S SOUL by SUSIE MONTGOMERY BEST |