LIKE a tender, loving maiden Dusting her devoted room When her sweetheart she awaiteth, Often dreaming on her broom. So when stars beglamour heaven, And the vesper-prayer's said, On the eve before the Seder, Father takes some feathers, bread, Rag, and wooden spoon, and taper; And he breaks the bread in seven, And like the child with playthings, playing, He naïvely searches leaven. First he hides in nook the bread-crumbs, Then like Jason on the quest For the glorified golden fleeces, To the search for leaven, addrest, By the lighted mystic taper, He like one a-dreaming prays; God be blest for sanctifying Man with leaven-searching ways. Then he locks the lips in silence, Like a Bismarck guarding tongue, Lest the deep-laid scheme of statecraft, By an ill-timed word go wrong. And with gravest mien and broodings, Ferrets out each hiding hole, Where he laid the treasured bread-crumbs, Sweeps them to their burning goal, In the spoon, with tuft and feathers; Seals it with the rag, and lays All away until the morrow, When, ere burning it, he prays: "All the leaven of my dwelling, All I saw or did not see, All I did or didn't banish, Void, as dust of earth shall be." Then he muses on the Seder, Like a maid who dusts her room When her sweetheart she awaiteth, Often dreaming on the broom. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE SMALL SELF AND THE LIBERAL SELF by JAMES GALVIN CHAMBER MUSIC: 14 by JAMES JOYCE LIKE A BULRUSH by MARIANNE MOORE THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON COLD HANDS WARM HEART by KAREN SWENSON KATHMANDU GUEST HOUSE by KAREN SWENSON GALAHAD IN THE CASTLE OF THE MAIDENS by SARA TEASDALE |