Help with The Mother's Return

I was a bit confussed by my reading of the Poem, A Mothers Return

In the first verses it says:

Quote:

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A month, sweet Little-ones, is past
Since your dear Mother went away, --
And she tomorrow will return;
Tomorrow is the happy day.

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But to me the rest of the poem seems to suggest the mother had died, and I am unsure by what is meant by her "return"

But then on further reading with the verses:

Quote:

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We talked of change, of winter gone,
Of green leaves on the hawthorn spray,
Of birds that build their nests and sing
And all "since Mother went away!"

To her these tales they will repeat,
To her our new-born tribes will show,
The goslings green, the ***'s colt,
The lambs that in the meadow go.

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I wondered if mother was ment in a broader sense, as in Mother Nature, and if perhaps the comming of spring was the mother's return? When life is restored to the once baren winter land?

Am I way off?