| Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867. | | | | IV. Her Sickness and Recovery | | By Frederick Tennyson (1807–1898) |
| | | WHEN thou wert laid in sickness and in pain | |
| Through one sad autumn, O the falling leaf | |
| Fell gentlier by thy casement in its grief, | |
| And still as holy tears, the evening rain; | |
| Methought the hamlet ne’er would wake again, | 5 |
| So mighty was the sorrow and the calm; | |
| And children wailed, and many a withered palm | |
| Was raised to heaven for thee, and not in vain. | |
| The meek, the rugged, wept beside thy door; | |
| The evil-minded took another way; | 10 |
| And fewer were the murmurs of the poor | |
| For their own troubles than thine evil day; | |
| And when another May-day brought thee forth, | |
| Something from heaven had fallen on the earth. | | | | |
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