fire,
Gather mushrooms, drink spring-water,
Live alone and sing to yourself
For a year and a year and a year!
ROSE-PETAL
Petal with rosy cheeks,
Petal with thoughts of your own,
Petal of my crimson-white flower out of June,
Little petal of my heart!
POEMS
See the fur coats go by!
The morning is like the inside of a snow-apple.
I will curl myself cushion-shape
On the window-seat;
I will read poems by snow-light.
If I cannot understand them so,
I will turn them upside down
And read them by the red candles
Of garden brambles.
SEAGARDE
I will return to you
O stillest and dearest,
To see the pearl of light
That flashes in your golden hair;
To hear you sing your songs of starlight
And tell your stories of the wonderful land
Of stars and fleecy sky;
To say to you that Seagarde will soon be here,
Seagarde the fairy
With her seagulls of hope!
EASTER
On Easter morn
Up the faint cloudy sky
I hear the Easter bell,
Ding dong . . . ding dong . . .
Easter morning scatters lilies
On every doorstep;
Easter morning says a glad thing
Over and over.
Poor people, beggars, old women
Are hearing the Easter bell . . .
Ding dong . . . ding dong . . .
BLUEBIRD
Oh bluebird with light red breast,
And your blue back like a feathered sky,
You have to go down south
Before biting winter comes
And my flower-beds are covered with fluff out of the clouds.
Before you go,
Sing me one more song
Of tree-tops down south,
Of darkies singing their babies to sleep,
Of sand and glittering stones
Where rivers pass;
Then . . . good-by!
GEOGRAPHY
I can tell balsam trees
By their grayish bluish silverish look of smoke.
Pine trees fringe out.
Hemlocks look like Christmas.
The spruce tree is feathered and rough
Like the legs of the red chickens in our poultry yard.
I can study my geography from chickens
Named for Plymouth Rock and Rhode Island,
And from trees out of Canada.
No; I shall leave the chickens out.
I shall make a new geography of my own.
I shall have a hillside of spruce and hemlock
Like a separate country,
And I shall mark a walk of spires on my map,
A
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