English poem
“Desponding Father! Mark This Altered Bough”
Composed 1835.--Published 1835
One of the “Miscellaneous Sonnets.”--ED.
Desponding Father! mark this altered bough, So beautiful of late, with sunshine warmed, Or moist with dews; what more unsightly now, Its blossoms shrivelled, and its fruit, if formed, Invisible? yet Spring her genial brow Knits not o’er that discolouring and decay As false to expectation. Nor fret thou At like unlovely process in the May Of human life: a Stripling’s graces blow, Fade and are shed, that from their timely fall (Misdeem it not a cankerous change) may grow Rich mellow bearings, that for thanks shall call: In all men, sinful is it to be slow To hope----in Parents, sinful above all.
Compare The Excursion (book iii. l. 649), and the sonnet (vol. vi. p. 72) beginning----
Surprised by joy----impatient as the Wind.
ED.
More by William Wordsworth
- “By A Blest Husband Guided, Mary Came”[53]
- “Come, Gentle Sleep, Death’S Image Tho’ Thou Art”
- “Critics, Right Honourable Bard, Decree”
- “Deign, Sovereign Mistress! To Accept A Lay”
- “Feel For The Wrongs To Universal Ken”
- “Fit Retribution, By The Moral Code”
- “Forth From A Jutting Ridge, Around Whose Base”
- “Four Fiery Steeds Impatient Of The Rein”