University of Virginia Library

At length, amid the phantoms of my brain,
A kind white face was mixed. It came and went.
Sometimes it slowly stole across the gloom,
And paused to gaze on me, then died away;
And sometimes it would lean above my couch,
And look into my eyes. As once it came
And hung above me for a silent hour,
I raised my wasted hand and touched its cheek:
It did not frown on me;—next, bolder grown,
I wandered o'er its brow, its mouth, its hair,
And then methought it smiled. I shrunk in fear,
Then touched the cheek again; and, wondering, said,
“Surely this should be my own mother's face!”
And dimly felt as if enclosed in arms,
As if an eager mouth were pressed to mine.
Delirium slid from off me like the flood
From off the world, and slowly I awoke
To the full knowledge of my mother's love,—
“God hath returned thee from the gates of death,
My poor tormented child!” That hour of joy!
That welcome back to life! I was as one
Drawn sorely wounded from his bed of blood
'Mong the war-horse's hoofs; as one redeemed
From the sea's foamy mouth, or arms of fire.
And in the progress of the weary days
My mother sat beside my bed, and told
How the long battle swayed 'tween life and death;
And how she 'tended me, and how, one night,
The life was wavering 'tween my parted lips,
Loose as the film that flutters on the grate;
And how, at twelve, she thought that all was o'er.
I stood within the street one April day,
Wan as a healthless primrose, which a leaf
Had shaded, that it could not drink the sun.
I lay down on a night of stormy rain;
The snow had fallen, and the world was dumb.
Now, showers of melody from unseen larks
Fell the long day upon the golden fields,
And the bare woods were putting on their green.