Poem by Thomas Hardy

The Sailor’s Mother

‘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’

1. The Supplanter
2. Afternoon Service at Mellstock
3. At the Word ‘Farewell’
4. Tragedian to Tragedienne
5. The Three Tall Men

Print

1498 Views

Last Poems

To Russian version