Themes and Variations/The Sailor's Mother

For other versions of this work, see The Sailor's Mother (Wilson).

THE SAILOR’S MOTHER.

My heart is o’erflowing,
My foot treads the foam,
Go tell to the wide world
My son has come home
From the far-rolling north sea,
Where mermaidens cry,
Where the sun, all the week long,
Goes round in the sky,
Where the ice-cliffs break seaward
With thunder—loud fall,
From the pale northern dancers—
He comes from you all!

Go, seek in the oak-chest
The blue-flowered plate,
The bowl like an eggshell,
The cup’s silver mate.
Lay on the round table
The damask so fine,
And cut the black cluster
Still left on the vine.
My hand shakes,—but bring me
That pure honeycomb,
Now nothing shall vex me,
My boy has come home!

Now twine on the doorway
Pale wreaths of jasmin,
And tell all the roses
His ship has come in.
How lucky my wheat-bread
Was baked yester night;
He loves the brown home-loaf,
And this is so light.
Now heap up wild berries
As black as the sloe—
I never must tell him
I’ve wept for him so!

The girls will come running
To hear all the news,
The neighbours with nodding
And scraping of shoes.
The fiddler, the fifer,
Will play as they run,
The blind beggar, even,
Will welcome my son.
He smiles like his father
(I’ll sit there and think),
Oh, could he but see us—
It makes my heart sink,
But what is that?—‘Mother’
I heard someone call,
‘Oh, Ronald, my first born!
You’ve come after all!’