 | Studies in verse (1865) |  |
36
Throbbed for a week the turmoil of farewell;
Familiar hands to touch, and haunts to tread
In greeting ere he go: neglected things
Prized in a sudden value at the end,
And last the bared room and the boxes closed,
And one more walk together in the fields.
When Mary held her son's hand all the way
And hardly spoke for fear that she should weep;
As all the land was waste before her eyes,
And the rich river-eases black with drought;
The corn-stem seemed all strengthless for its ear,
And weary with its wavings in the sun.
And still she found a sorrow where she went;
And a faint burden in the broken stirs
And eddies of an irritable wind:
In clouds that lay in ruinous heaps before
The disc of evening, cold with bosomed rain:
In faded masses of the summer green,
Like the grey hairs that come before their time.
| Studies in verse (1865) | |