I SHALL be young again—and pretty enough
To make the saints smile at me as I pass
With swift, white feet across the heavenly grass.

I shall be gay and careless, and my heart,
Forever like some hidden bird, shall sing
Of some approaching and most lovely thing.

Surely, a thought absurd, unorthodox,
To enter through an office door, or come
Grotesquely, as the subway crowds rush home.

There is a mirror in my lodging-house
Stained here and there with lines like slanting rain,
That shows a woman neat and tired and plain.

But in that mirror that no other sees
I watch sometimes the girl in Paradise,—
Pretty—and young—with laughter in her eyes.