Summary

In “Nurse’s Song” the speaker listens to the sounds of the children playing outside on the green. Meanwhile, “the days of [her] youth rise fresh in [her] mind” and her face “turns green and pale” (41). In the second stanza the speaker calls home the children and then, addressing the reader, reflects on how “your spring and your day are wasted in play,/and your winter and night in disguise” (41).

“The Sick Rose” is a short poem that describes a rose who has been made sick by “the invisible worm/that flies in the night” (42). Having found the rose’s “bed/of crimson joy” the worm destroys the rose’s life with his “dark secret love” (42).

In “The Fly” the speaker acknowledges the plight of the “Little Fly” whose play he has ended by thoughtlessly brushing it away (43). The speaker then poses the...