Nothing of you that can do
Aught, except those eyes of blue.
How they open, how they close!
Eyelids of the baby-rose,
Open and shut, so blue, so wise,
Baby-eyelids, baby-eyes.

III

That, Fragoletta, is the rain
Beating upon the window-pane;
But lo! the golden sun appears,
To kiss away the window's tears.
That, Fragoletta, is the wind
That rattles so the window-blind;
And yonder shining thing's a star,
Blue eyes,--you seem ten times as far.
That, Fragoletta, is a bird
That speaks, yet never says a word;
Upon a cherry-tree it sings,
Simple as all mysterious things;
Its little life to peck and pipe
As long as cherries ripe and ripe,
And minister unto the need
Of baby-birds that feed and feed.
This, Fragoletta, is a flower,
Open and fragrant for an hour,
A flower, a transitory thing,
Each petal fleeting as a wing,
All a May morning blows and blows,
And then for everlasting goes.

IV

Blue eyes, against the whiteness pressed
Of little mother's hallowed breast,
The while your trembling lips are fed,
Look up at mother's bended head,
All benediction over you--
blue eyes looking into blue!
Fragoletta is so small,
We wonder that she lives at all--
Tiny alabaster girl,
Hardly bigger than a pearl;
That is why we take such care,
Lest someone runs away with her.

V

A BALLAD OF WOMAN
_(Gratefully Dedicated to Mrs. Pankhurst_)

She bore us in her dreaming womb,
And laughed into the face of Death;
She laughed, in her strange agony,--
To give her little baby breath.

Then, by some holy mystery,
She fed us from her sacred breast,
Soothed us with little birdlike words--
To rest--to rest--to rest--to rest;

Yea, softly fed us with her life--
Her bosom like the world in May:
Can it be true that men, thus fed,
Feed women--as I hear them say?

Long ere we grew to girl and boy,
She sewed the little things we wore,
And smiled unto herself for joy--
Mysterious Portress of the Door.

Shall she who bore the son of God,
And made the rose of Sappho's song,
She who saved France, and beat the drum
Of freedom, brook this vulgar wrong?

I wonder if such men as these
Had once a sister with blue eyes,
Kind as the soothing hand of God,
And as the quiet heaven wise.

I wonder if they ever saw
A soldier lying on a bed
On some lone battle-field, and watched
Some holy woman bind his head.

I wonder if they ever walked,
Lost in a black and weary land,
And suddenly a flo