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Home  »  The Book of the Sonnet  »  Frederick Tennyson (1807–1898)

Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867.

IV. Her Sickness and Recovery

Frederick Tennyson (1807–1898)

WHEN thou wert laid in sickness and in pain

Through one sad autumn, O the falling leaf

Fell gentlier by thy casement in its grief,

And still as holy tears, the evening rain;

Methought the hamlet ne’er would wake again,

So mighty was the sorrow and the calm;

And children wailed, and many a withered palm

Was raised to heaven for thee, and not in vain.

The meek, the rugged, wept beside thy door;

The evil-minded took another way;

And fewer were the murmurs of the poor

For their own troubles than thine evil day;

And when another May-day brought thee forth,

Something from heaven had fallen on the earth.