Read "The Sailor's Mother" by Thomas Hardy online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"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. "