The Affliction of Margaret, W. Wordsworth. This is about the pain of a mother whose son has been missing for seven years. The anguish of not knowing what has happened will never go away. Whatever condition or circumstance her only child is in, she wishes to know for a certain. The Affliction of Margaret. Where art thou, my beloved son, where art thou, worse to me than dead, Will find me prosperous or undone, or if the grape be now thy bed, Why am I ignorant of the same, that I may rest and neither blame, Nor sorrow may attend thy name. Seven years alas to have received no tidings of an only child, To have despair and have hoped, believed, and being forever more beguiled. Sometimes with thoughts of very bliss, I catch them, and then I miss, Was ever darkness like to this. He was among the prime and worth, an object butious to behold, Well-born, well-bred, I sent him forth in Janus, In the scent and the wound. If things ensued that wanted grace, as have been said, They were not base and never blush was on my face, A little dot, the young one dream, when full of play and childish cares, What power is in his wildest scream, heard by his mother unawares. He knows it not, he cannot gas, years to a mother, bring distress, But do not make her love the less. Neglect me, know a suffered long, from that ill thought, And being blind said, Pride shall help me in my wrong. Kind mother, have I been, as kind as ever breathed, Then that is true, of wet my path with tears like dew, Weeping for him when no one knew. My son, if thou be humbled, poor, hope is upon her end of game, Oh, do not dread thy mother's door, Think not of me with grief and pain. I now can see with bitter eyes, and worldly grander eyes despise, And fortune with her gifts and lies. Alas, the founts of heaven have wings, and blasts of heaven will aid their flight, The mount, how short a voyage, brings the wanderers back to their delight, Chains tiled down by land and sea, and wishes, being as mine may be, All that is left to comfort thee, perhaps some dungeon hears the girl, Mamed, wrangled by an owing man, or thou upon a desert, Thuron in here, does the lion stand. Our husband, summoned to the deep, bell-dow, and all thy mates to keep him in commune, Could both sleep. I look for ghosts, but none will force their way to me, To sphalsely said that there was ever intercourse between the living and the dead. For surely then I should have sight of him, I wait for day and night, With love and longing, infinite. My apprehensions come in crowds, I dread the wrestling of the grass, The very shadows of the clouds have power to shape me as they pass. I question things and do not find one that will answer to my mind, And all the world appears unkind. Beyond participation lie my troubles and beyond relief, If any chance to give aside they pity me and not my grief, Then come to me my son, or send some tidings that my wolves may end. I have no other earthly friend.