Classic Poem

Forth from the forest wend I slowly,
While in my ears yet rings the holy
Dithyramb. The noon is past,
But the sun rages. There is cast
A dumbness yet o'er earth and sky.
Down to the river then will I,
Slowly about its depths to swim,
While the stream fondles every limb
And soothes its ache. Deep I will dip,
And, blowing, raise my locks, that drip
Till the slim Hyads troop to see,
And revel, too, and play with me,
Hanging my ears with humid weed
Or mounting me as water steed.
Then, musing I will on, and so
Stray to where a silver slow
River circles through the meads,
Wherein the mooching great ox feeds,
And turns a slow eye round the sky,
Wondering if he can ever die.
And there, mayhap, 'twill come to pass
I'll hear a sweet voice in the grass,
And yet shall mark no singer nigh,
Till, gently peering, I espy
A solemn, elfish child who sits
Unseen mid towering grass, and knits
An endless, endless daisy chain,
Crooning the while some soft refrain
Her mother sings her when she closes
Her twilit eyes.

Little Girl. Three red, red, roses —
One each for father and mother, and one,
The reddest of all, for her baby son.
None for wee Amoret? Oh, none! for she
Some day, when she grows up, a red rose will be!

Then, crossed-legged mid the meadow-sweet,
I will sink down, laugh low, and greet
Her blue, inquiring, childish eyes
With mine, sharp, merry, brown, and wise,
And tell her tales — of Jack who slew
Ten giants; or Mirabel who flew
On a white owl to find the Prince
And give to him the Golden Quince
Would change him from a roaring bull
To a youth blithe and beautiful;
Or tales of the Goblin and the Sloth,
Who watched the moon and swore an oath
To find out what she was: how these
Explored her mines and found her — cheese.

Thus will I sit and both amuse
Until I rise and beg excuse:
Off " to El Raschid in Assyria"
Or " the Grand-Duchess of Illyria,"
Or " to ask the maiden moon
Why one only of her shoon
She left us last night in the sky,
And not her silver self, and why
She always climbs the self-same track?
Lets no one ever see her back?"