"Up, Timothy, up with your staff and away!
Not a soul in the village this morning will stay;
The hare has just started from Hamilton's grounds,
And Skiddaw is glad with the cry of the hounds."
-- Of coats and of jackets grey, scarlet, and green,
On the slopes of the pastures all colours were seen;
With their comely blue aprons, and caps white as snow,
The girls on the hills made a holiday show.
Fresh sprigs of green box-wood, not six months before,
Filled the funeral basin at Timothy's door;
A coffin through Timothy's threshold had past;
One Child did it bear, and that Child was his last.
Now fast up the dell came the noise and the fray,
The horse and the horn, and the hark! hark away!
Old Timothy took up his staff, and he shut
With a leisurely motion the door of his hut.
Perhaps to himself at that moment he said;
"The key I must take, for my Ellen is dead."
But of this in my ears not a word did he speak;
And he went to the chase with a tear on his cheek.
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More Poems by William Wordsworth
• A Character
• A Night Piece
• A Whirl Blast from Behind the Hill
• Andrew Jones
• Anecdote For Fathers
• Animal Tranquillity and Decay
• Calm is all Nature as a Resting Wheel
• Ellen Irwin
• Expostulation and Reply
• I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud
• Influence of Natural Objects
• It was an April Morning: fresh and clear
• Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree
• Lines Written In Early Spring
• Lucy Gray
• Nutting
• Ode, Composed On A May Morning
• Remembrance of Collins
• Rural Architecture
• She Dwelt Among Untrodden Ways
• She Was a Phantom of Delight
• Passion Have I Known
• Surprised By Joy
• The Birth of Love
• The Childless Father
• The Forsaken
• The Green Linnet
• The Mother's Return
• The Pet Lamb: A Pastoral
• The Rainbow
• The Reverie of Poor Susan
• She Grew In Sun
• The Solitary Reaper
• The World Is To Much With Us; Late And Soon
• We Are Seven
• With Ships the Sea was Sprinkled Far and Nigh
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• Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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• Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• Emily Dickinson
• George Gordon, Lord Byron
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• Hilaire Belloc
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• Lewis Carroll
• Robert Frost
• Robert Browning
• Robert Burns
• Robert Herrick
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• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• Sarah Teasdale
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• William Blake
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William Wordsworth The Childless Father - Poem Lyrics - William Wordsworth - The Childless Father
