("Regret") is a poem by Flemish poet
Willem Elsschot
Alphonsus Josephus de Ridder (7 May 1882 – 31 May 1960), was a Belgian writer and poet who wrote under the pseudonym Willem Elsschot (). One of the most prominent Flemish authors, his most famous work, ''Cheese'' (1933) is the most translated ...
. First published in 1934, the poem was reprinted in his 1957 collected works without the final verse paragraph, which contains a possibly controversial term for "woman". The poem, which expresses the guilt
and desperate love felt too late by a son for the now-dead mother, is one of Elsschot's best-known works. The last line of the sometimes-omitted paragraph, "" ("Serve the woman known as mother"), has become an oft-cited phrase in
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
to suggest the difficulty of serving and even portraying motherhood.
References
{{Reflist
External links
Three Elsschot poems on "Mother"
Belgian poems
1934 poems