I liked my old home best, But this was pleasant too: So here we made our nest And here I grew. And now and then my Lady In riding past our door Would nod to nurse and speak, Or stoop and pat my cheek; And I was always ready To hold the field-gate wide For my Lady to go through; My Lady in her veil So seldom put aside, My Lady grave and pale. I often sat to wonder Who might my parents be, For I knew of something under My simple-seeming state. Nurse never talked to me Of mother or of father, But watched me early and late With kind suspicious cares: Or not suspicious, rather Anxious, as if she knew Some secret I might gather And smart for unawares. Thus I grew. But Nurse waxed old and gray, Bent and weak with years. There came a certain day That she lay upon her bed Shaking her palsied head, With words she gasped to say Which had to stay unsaid. Then with a jerking hand Held out so piteously She gave a ring to me Of gold wrought curiously, A ring which she had worn Since the day that I was born, She once had said to me: I slipped it on my finger; Her eyes were keen to linger On my hand that slipped it on; Then she sighed one rattling sigh And stared on with sightless eye:-- The one who loved me was gone. How long I stayed alone With the corpse I never knew, For I fainted dead as stone: When I came to life once more I was down upon the floor, With neighbors making ado To bring me back to life. I heard the sexton's wife Say: "Up, my lad, and run To tell it at the Hall; She was my Lady's nurse, And done can't be undone. I'll watch by this poor lamb. I guess my Lady's purse Is always open to such: I'd run up on my crutch A cripple as I am," (For cramps had vexed her much,) "Rather than this dear heart Lack one to take her part." For days, day after day, On my weary bed I lay, Wishing the time would pass; O, so wishing that I was Likely to pass away: For the one friend whom I knew Was dead, I knew no other, Neither father nor mother; And I, what should I do? One day the sexton's wife Said: "Rouse yourself, my dear: My Lady has driven down From the Hall into the town, And we think she's coming here. Cheer up, for life is life." But I would not look or speak, Would not cheer up at all. My tears were like to fall, So I turned round to the wall And hid my hollow cheek, Making as if I slept, As silent as a stone, And no one knew I wept. What was my Lady to me, The grand lady from the Hall? She might come, or stay away, I was sick at heart that day: The whole world seemed to be Nothing, just nothing to me, For aught that I could see.