Note.—Thanks due to Helen Rootham for her earnest collaboration in this poem.
III
THE GIRL WITH THE LINT-WHITE LOCKS
THE bright-striped wooden fields are edged
With noisy cock’s crow trees, scarce fledged—
The trees that spin like tops, all weathers,
Like strange birds ruffling glassy feathers.
My hair is white as flocks of geese,
And water hisses out of this;
And when the late sun burns my cheek
Till it is pink as apples sleek,
I wander in the fields and know
Why kings do squander pennies so—
Lest they at last should weight their eyes!
But beggars’ ragged minds, more wise,
Know without flesh we cannot see—
And so they hoard stupidity
(The dull ancestral memory
That is the only property).