COMFORT me with apples! I am sick unto death, I am sad to despair; My trouble is more than my strength is to bear; Back again to the green hills that first met my sight I come, as a child to its mother, to-night; -- Comfort me with apples! Comfort me with apples! Bring the ripe mellow fruit from the early "sweet bough," -- (Is the tree that we used to climb growing there now?) And "russets," whose cheeks are as freckled and dun As the cheeks of the children that play in the sun; -- Comfort me with apples! Comfort me with apples! Gather those streaked with red, that we named "morning-light." Our good father set, when his hair had grown white, The tree, though he said when he planted the root, "The hands of another shall gather the fruit;" -- Comfort me with apples! Comfort me with apples! Go down to the end of the orchard, and bring The fair "lady-fingers" that grew by the spring; Pale "bell-flowers," and "pippins," all burnished with gold, Like the fruit the Hesperides guarded of old; -- Comfort me with apples! Comfort me with apples! Get the sweet "junietta," so loved by the bees, And the "pearmain," that grew on the queen of the trees; And close by the brook, where they hang ripe and lush, Go and shake down the best of them all, -- "maiden's-blush;" -- Comfort me with apples! Comfort me with apples! For lo! I am sick; I am sad and opprest; I come back to the place where, a child, I was blest. Hope is false, love is vain, for the old things I sigh; And if these cannot comfort me, then I must die! Comfort me with apples! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A PASSER-BY by ROBERT SEYMOUR BRIDGES MONADNOC by RALPH WALDO EMERSON SONNET TO HOPE by HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS LYRICS AND EPICS by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH THE CHILD IN BLACK by AMELIA JOSEPHINE BURR THE EARTH MOTHER by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON THE CURSE OF MINERA by GEORGE GORDON BYRON TO A SULPHUR-CRESTED COCKATOO by MARY NICHOL CAMPBELL OBSERVATIONS IN THE ART OF ENGLISH POESY: 10. TROCHAIC VERSE: THE SIXTH EPIGRAM by THOMAS CAMPION |