Explore "The Mother" by Frederic Manning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
She hath such quiet eyes, / That feed on all earth's wonders! She will sit / Here in the orchard, and the bewildering beauty / Of blossoming boughs lulls her as day grows late / And level sunlight streameth through the tree-stems / Lying as pale gold on the green fallows, and gilding the fleeces / Of the slow-feeding sheep in the pastures.
While in her there stirs, / A dream, a delight, a wonder her being knew not, / Yet now remembers, wistfully, as a thing long lost, / Sunken in dim, green, lucid sea-caves; / And her desire goeth out from her, toward God, through the twilight, / Lost, too, in the waters of unfathomable silence.
But the child, gazing upward, / Sees the glory of the apple-blossom suddenly scattered, / As a bird flies through the branches; / And he reaches toward the soft, white fluttering petals / That light upon his face, and laughs; and she / Stoops over him quickly with sudden, hot, passionate kisses, / Smiling for all her tears.