THE SAILOR’S MOTHER
Reading edition
“O whence do you come, Figure in the night-fog that chills me numb?”
“I come to you across from my house up there, And I don’t mind the brine-mist clinging to me That blows from the quay, For I heard him in my chamber, and thought you unaware.”
“But what did you hear, That brought you blindly knocking in this middle-watch so drear?”
“My sailor son’s voice as ’twere calling at your door, And I don’t mind my bare feet clammy on the stones, And the blight to my bones, For he only knows of this house I lived in before.”
“Nobody’s nigh, Woman like a skeleton, with socket-sunk eye.”
“Ah—nobody’s nigh! And my life is drearisome, And this is the old home we loved in many a day Before he went away; And the salt fog mops me. And nobody’s come!”
From “To Please his Wife.”