The spider thread that thrids
The gray-plumed grass has not my leave to touch them.
My casual ghost may slip,
Issuing tiptoe, from the pure inhuman;
The tissues of my lip
Will bruise your eyelids, while I am a woman.
ii
The title poem in Amanda Hall’s book, The Dancer in the Shrine, tempts to quotation, but there seems to me something unfair in reprinting it complete and to cut lines from it is to mutilate both what is taken and that which is left. There is a good deal of the life of the countryside in the book; Miss Hall’s New England is that of Thoreau but her lyrical gift is distinctly personal. A characteristic mood and treatment is shown in “I’ll Build My House of Sticks and Stones,” from which the following couplets are taken:
I’ll build my house of sticks and stones,
Of lollypops and herring bones,