Explore "The Childless Father" by William Wordsworth on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"Up, Timothy, up with your Staff and away!
Not a soul in the village this morning will stay; / The Hare has just started from Hamilton's grounds, / And Skiddaw is glad with the cry of the hounds."
-Of coats and of jackets gray, scarlet and green, / On the slopes of the pastures all colours were seen; / With their comely blue aprons, and caps white as snow, / The Girls on the hills made a holiday show.
The bason of box-wood,20 just six months before, / Had stood on the table at Timothy's door; / A Coffin through Timothy's threshold had passed; / One Child did it bear, and that Child was his last.
Now fast up the dell came the noise and the fray, / The horse and the horn, and the hark! hark away!
Old Timothy took up his staff, and he shut / With a leisurely motion the door of his hut.
Perhaps to himself at that moment he said, / "The key I must take, for my Ellen is dead."
But of this in my ears not a word did he speak, / And he went to the chase with a tear on his cheek.