Page:The Prelude, Wordsworth, 1850.djvu/139

BOOK V.] Each in his several melancholy walk

Stringed like a poor man's heifer at its feed,

Led through the lanes in forlorn servitude;

Or rather like a stallèd ox debarred

From touch of growing grass, that may not taste

A flower till it have yielded up its sweets

A prelibation to the mower's scythe.

Behold the parent hen amid her brood,

Though fledged and feathered, and well pleased to part

And straggle from her presence, still a brood,

And she herself from the maternal bond

Still undischarged; yet doth she little more

Than move with them in tenderness and love,

A centre to the circle which they make;

And now and then, alike from need of theirs

And call of her own natural appetites,

She scratches, ransacks up the earth for food,

Which they partake at pleasure. Early died

My honoured Mother, she who was the heart

And hinge of all our learnings and our loves:

She left us destitute, and, as we might,

Trooping together. Little suits it me

To break upon the sabbath of her rest

With any thought that looks at others' blame;