Extracts From the Grandmother’s Apology. By Alfred Tennyson
And Willy, my eldest born, is gone you say, little Ann?
Ruddy and white and strong on his legs, he looks like a man.
“Here’s a leg for a babe of a week!” says doctor; and he would be bound
There was not his like that year in twenty parishes round.
Strong of his hands, and strong on his legs, but still of his tongue!
I ought to have gone before him; I wonder he went so young.
I cannot cry for him, Annie; I have not long to stay;
Perhaps I shall see him the sooner, for he lived far away.
Why do you look at me, Annie? you think I am hard and cold;
But all my children have gone before me, I am so old:
I cannot weep for Willy, nor can I weep for the rest;
Only at your age, Annie, I could have wept with the best.
The first child that ever I bore was dead before he was born:
Shadow and shine is life, little Annie, flower and thorn.
I had not wept, little Annie, not since I had been a wife;
But I wept like a child, that day; for the babe had fought for his life.
His dear little face was troubled, as if with anger or pain;
I looked at the still little body,—his trouble had all been in vain.
For Willy I cannot weep; I shall see him another morn;
But I wept like a child for the child that was dead before he was born.
But he cheered me, my good man, for he seldom said me nay:
Kind, like a man, was he; like a man, too, would have his way;
Never jealous,—not he: we had many a happy year:
And he died, and I could not weep,—my own time seemed so near.
But I wished it had been God’s will that I, too, then could have died:
I began to be tired a little, and fain had slept at his side;
And that was ten years back, or more, if I don’t forget:
But as for the children, Annie, they are all about me yet.
Pattering over the boards, my Annie, who left me at two;
Patter she goes, my own little Annie,—an Annie like you.
Pattering over the boards, she comes and goes at her will,
While Harry is in the five-acre and Charlie ploughing the hill.
And Harry and Charlie, I hear them, too,—they sing to their team;
Often they come to the door in a pleasant kind of dream.
They come and sit by my chair, they hover about my bed:
I am not always certain if they be alive or dead.
And yet I know for a truth, there’s none of them left alive;
For Harry went at sixty, your father at sixty-five;
And Willy, my eldest born, at nigh threescore and ten;
I knew them all as babies, and now they are elderly men.
For mine is a time of peace; it is not often I grieve;
I am oftener sitting at home in my father’s farm at eve:
And the neighbors come and laugh and gossip, and so do I;
I find myself often laughing at things that have long gone by.
To be sure the preacher says our sins should make us sad;
But mine is a time of peace, and there is grace to be had;
And God, not man, is the Judge of us all when life shall cease;
And in this Book, little Annie, the message is one of peace.
And age is a time of peace, so it be free from pain;
And happy has been my life, but I would not live it again.
I seem to be tired a little, that’s all, and long for rest;
Only at your age, Annie, I could have wept with the best.
So Willy has gone,—my beauty, my eldest born, my flower;
But how can I weep for Willy? he has but gone for an hour,—
Gone for a minute, my son, from this room into the next;
I too shall go in a minute. What time have I to be vext?