Brooding still and absorb’d, but now in a nobler Sorrow.
His Mother! His passionate, patient, seeing, large-hearted Mother!
Mother to all sad hearts, to all lives crippled or lonely,
Mother-confessor to many—lads and girls in their hot shame,
Husbands and wives in their cares....Recluse, yet comrade....Self-outcast,
Yet welcome sharer of sorrows, understander of souls....
The sick demanded her touch, the eyes of the dying her deep eyes;
Like Fog in face of a breeze, misery melted before her,
Courage came with her coming, cheer remain’d when she went.—
But, for her, what comrade, what comfort, what understander?
Irony! only himself.
Now, as with vision new open’d,
All her way he discern’d—how, to pay, she had pluck’d out
The hot, wild heart that offended, had died to herself, had chosen
For the new, difficult life, the difficult, lone, new country,
Renouncing all ease, all help, all love, save that of her son—O
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