Winifred Welles’s “Hail and Farewell” is a quietly devastating poem about a role reversal between parent and child. The speaker recalls how the person addressed—likely a mother—once waited through pain to welcome her into the world. Now, as that person lies dying, the speaker must wait through a different kind of watching. The poem sets birth and death side by side: both involve long, helpless waiting. What makes it painful is the guilt and grief the speaker admits: she asks how she can stay still while her mother is so still, or watch those “slow steps from earth” without a broken heart. The last stanza broadens into a tender, ghostly image of “white watchers” straining to hear a soul arrive or leave. It leaves the reader with a hushed, heavy sense that loving someone means waiting at both doors.
Hail and Farewell — Summary
With tears and a faithful heart and brave mirth, Once on a time you watched to welcome me. Waiting and weariness and agony Until the last were what you thought me worth. But wearier than the months that wait for birth Are those that wait for death— How shall I be Still while you are so still? How shall I see Unbrokenhearted your slow steps from earth?
So the white watchers gather near to hark The soul's approach, the heralding of the horn, And so they strain and listen for the tread Of the free soul retreating down the dark — Mothers who wait for children to be born, Children who wait for mothers to be dead.