A mother and her little son are playing together in the firelight at twilight. Suddenly, the mood changes: she bends quickly to catch him, and he calls out, “Try, mother, try!” Then the scene goes quiet. A figure called Old Nurse Silence hushes their play, and the speaker is left asking what happened and what “flew away” in that tiny moment.
The speaker seems to be recalling a moment when ordinary closeness tipped into loss. The child’s words sound playful, but the mother’s sudden, woeful movement and the presence of silence suggest something serious, perhaps illness or death. Firelight and twilight make the scene feel warm yet fragile, as if a small life or a moment of childhood vanished in an instant. The mood is tender, eerie, and quietly grief-stricken.