I I STOOD at the gate of the cot Where my darling, with side-glance demure, Would spy, on her trim garden-plot, The busy wild things chase and lure. For these with their ways were her feast; They had surety no enemy lurked. Their deftest of tricks to their least She gathered in watch as she worked. II When berries were red on her ash, The blackbird would rifle them rough, Till the ground underneath looked a gash, And her rogue grew the round of a chough. The squirrel cocked ear o'er his hoop, Up the spruce, quick as eye, trailing brush. She knew any tit of the troop All as well as the snail-tapping thrush. III I gazed: 'twas the scene of the frame, With the face, the dear life for me, fled. No window a lute to my name, No watcher there plying the thread. But the blackbird hung pecking at will; The squirrel from cone hopped to cone; The thrush had a snail in his bill, And tap-tapped the shell hard on a stone. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SONNET (ON AN OLD BOOK WITH UNCUT LEAVES) by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR PEARLS OF THE FAITH: 80, 81. GHAFOOR, MUNTAKIM by EDWIN ARNOLD MON REPOS (MY MOTHER'S GIRLHOOD HOME) by ALFRED BARRETT FORMALITY AND THE SOUL: 2. JAMES MACNEIL WHISTLER by KARL W. BIGELOW SONGS OF THE SEA CHILDREN: 84 by BLISS CARMAN TWO GARDENIAS by BEULAH JACKSON CHARMLEY LAY OF THE DESERTED INFLUENZAED by HENRY CHOLMONDELEY-PENNELL |