Frances Cornford’s short lyric gives voice to a very physical fear of dying. The speaker is not mainly worried about pain or the unknown; what she dreads is being cut off from the world she loves. She imagines herself sick and close to death, shut inside a “breathless chamber,” and there she will forget “my mother earth.” The things she would lose are simple and sensory: hedges bright with wet flowers and muddy roads under an open sky. Repeating the first line three times makes the thought feel almost obsessive, as if she cannot shake the worry. The mood is quiet but anxious, poised between gratitude for the living world and fear of leaving it. Death here is not dramatic; it is dislikeable because it means no longer being able to touch, see, or be part of the earth.
Dislike of Death — Summary
My mother earth I shall forget When I am sick and like to die; There, in a breathless chamber set, My mother earth I shall forget, These hedges starred with flowers wet, These muddy roads beneath the sky. My mother earth I shall forget, When I am sick and like to die.