And he returned when poppies strewed
Their golden blots o’er moss and leaf,—
Blond little Esaus of the wood,
So fair of face, of life so brief.—
Did he forget?—Not he, in truth!—
“No month,” he thought, “holds so much grace,
No month of spring, such grace and youth,
As the sweet April of her face.”
In fall the frail gerardia
Hung hints of sunset and of dawn
On root and rock, as if to draw
Her lips, remind him of one gone:—
Of one unworthy, in pursuit
Of butterflies, who does not dream
A flower, broken by her foot,
Sweeps, helpless, with her down the stream.
SOME SUMMER DAYS
I
If you had seen her waiting there
Among the tiger-lily blooms,—
That sowed their jewels everywhere
Among the woodland gleams and glooms,—
You had confessed her very fair,
And sweeter than the wood’s perfumes.
A country girl with bare brown feet,
She waits, while day slopes down the deeps:
The afternoon is dead with heat,
And all the weary shadow sleeps
Like toil, arm-pillowed in the wheat,
Beside the scythe with which he reaps.
There is no sound more distant than
The cow-bell on the vine-hung hill;
No nearer than the locust’s span
Of noise that makes the silence shrill:
And now there comes a sun-browned man
Through tiger-lilies of the rill.
Long will they talk: till, in the end,
The clear west glows, the east grows pale;
Until the glow and pallor blend
Like moonlight on a shifting sail;
And then he ’ll clasp her; she will bend
Her head, consenting. Day will fail:
The west will flame, then fade away
Through heavy orange, rose, and red,
And leave the heavens violet gray
Above a gypsy-lily bed:
Then they will go; and he will say
Such words to her as none has said.