Explore "In Childbed" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
IN the middle of the night / Mother's spirit came and spoke to me, / Looking weariful and white- / As 'twere untimely news she broke to me.
"O my daughter, joyed are you / To own the weetless child you mother there; / ‘Men may search the wide world through,' / You think, ‘nor find so fair another there!'
"Dear, this midnight time unwombs / Thousands just as rare and beautiful; / Thousands whom High Heaven foredooms / To be as bright, as good, as dutiful.
"Source of ecstatic hopes and fears / And innocent maternal vanity, / Your fond exploit but shapes for tears / New thoroughfares in sad humanity.
"Yet as you dream, so dreamt I / When Life stretched forth its morning ray to me; / Other views for by and by! ". / Such strange things did mother say to me.