Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, HOMESICK, by DAVID GRAY (1836-1888)


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

HOMESICK, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Come to me, o my mother! Come to me
Last Line: Thy beauty constant to the constant change?
Subject(s): Absence; Mothers; Separation; Isolation


COME to me, O my Mother! come to me,
Thine own son slowly dying far away!
Through the moist ways of the wide ocean, blown
By great invisible winds, come stately ships
To this calm bay for quiet anchorage;
They come, they rest awhile, they go away,
But, O my Mother, never comest thou!
The snow is round thy dwelling, the white snow,
That cold soft revelation pure as light,
And the pine-spur is mystically fringed,
Laced with incrusted silver. Here--ah me!--
The winter is decrepit, underborn,
A leper with no power but his disease.
Why am I from thee, Mother, far from thee?
Far from the frost enchantment, and the woods
Jewelled from bough to bough? O home, my home!
O river in the valley of my home,
With mazy-winding motion intricate,
Twisting thy deathless music underneath
The polished ice-work,--must I nevermore
Behold thee with familiar eyes, and watch
Thy beauty changing with the changeful day,
Thy beauty constant to the constant change?





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