O! day, immaculate and kind,
Make no rude haste or speed.
But loiter in less trodden paths
Walk lightly o’er the mead.
Spring and I are holding hands
On a green hill’s dazzling crest.
Make this day, God, go very slow
More slowly than the rest.
Autumn
I SEE you now, your autumn gown
In wanton fashion hung,
Your crimson scarf half rakishly,
To trifling breezes flung.
I was distressed and sad to think
You did not even care.
But once your harp sang low and sweet
You breathed a solemn prayer.
You sang soft broken numbers
Sad as your soul’s distress,
And I loved you no matter how wanton
Or scarlet or scanty your dress.
Little Girl
FROM out the calendar of time
Grant me one glorious day.
And let me follow singing streams,
So cool with tossing spray.
And riot in their pebbled beds
Where willows bend and swirl
Their giddy heads, as once they did
When I was, “little girl.”
And let me feel again the clutch
One gets down in the throat
From long admiring, silent things
Faint sounds and clouds afloat.
Let afternoon slip languidly,
Tree branches bend and twirl
Adoringly: as once they did
When I was “little girl.”
Give me one riotous unbound day
To climb a dizzy hill.
Waist deep in laurel, where wood birds
Gyrate and mock and trill.
Where even timid walkers’ steps
Unloose great rocks that hurl,
Delightedly, to depths I feared
When I was “little girl.”
Grant me one free unbounded day
Wherein I may explore,
The land where dream folks’ houses shed
Moon dazzle from the door.
Oh! riotous day detain my steps
Clasp me from this mist whirl
And let me live the dreams I dreamed
When I was “little girl.”