THE VEGETARIAN’S DAUGHTER
She ate her oat-cake by the fire, Her bath was done and dried her hair, Her nightgown was her sole attire, Her towel steamed across a chair.
And as the oat-cake contour grew Eroded as a tide-worn cape, She named the jagged residue After the beast most like its shape.
“This is a pig, a growly bear, A baa-sheep” (and she bit him)—thus Her speech flowed on, to my despair Incredibly carnivorous.
At last, all wreathed in drowsy smiles, She munched the final gee-gee’s head— “Ah, Betsey, what would Eustace Miles, And what would Bernard Shaw have said?”
HONEY MEADOW
Here, Betsey, where the sainfoin blows, Pink and the grass more thickly grows, Where small brown bees are winging To clamber up the stooping flowers, We’ll share the sweet and sunny hours Made murmurous with their singing.
Dear, it requires no small address In such a billowy floweriness For you, so young, to sally: Yet would you still out-stay the sun And linger when his light was done Along the haunted valley.
O small brown fingers, clutched to seize The biggest blooms, don’t spill the bees; Imagine what contempt he Would meet who ventured to arrive Home, of an evening, at the hive, With both his pockets empty!