Lizette Woodworth Reese imagines coming back to England the way a person returns to a beloved old house and slowly notices small absences—a blue flower missing, a thinner bush, a different sound among the bees. Only gradually does she feel the deeper loss: a familiar face gone, a step no longer on the stairs. England itself seems altered and worn, its beauty stripped back. Yet ordinary life continues; city trees still bloom, girls still pick country flowers, neighbors still buy and plant and visit. That makes the change more painful, not less. The speaker feels tender grief mixed with deepened love, calling England “more worth loving now” because its loveliness is spent and fragile. The mood is quiet, elegiac, and intimate, like mourning someone still present but irrevocably changed.
Changed England — Summary
As one, who comes back to a house of yore, Some high old house in legendary trees. And misses blue flower here; there, at the door. Notes thinning bush, a difference in the bees; Then enters, halts, and of a sudden knows A face gone out, a step lost on the stair. So I, in England. Every buffet shows Upon her cheek; her every bone lies bare.
Yet comes not still the bloom to urban bough? Yet pluck not girls the country thorn and sigh? Folks buy, and sow, and neighbors go about? Oh, different! Oh, more worth loving now. Spent loveliness, that hurts me like a cry; — The step lost on the stair, the face gone out!