63
IN THE BLUE RIDGE 66
YE WHO ARE TO SING 70
"AND THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST" 73
MAGDALEN TO HER POET 76
FRIENDS 85
TRYST 89
IN THE STUDIO 90
LOVERS' LEAP 91
HAVENED 94
MID-MAY 102
THE LOSS 104
CALLED 105
SONG OF TO-MORROW 108
LITTLE DAUGHTERS 110

_The author thanks the editors of "Scribner's Magazine," "The
Century," "The Atlantic Monthly," and "M'Clure's" for permission to
reprint the greater part of the verse included in this volume._

PATH FLOWER

A red-cap sang in Bishop's wood,
A lark o'er Golder's lane,
As I the April pathway trod
Bound west for Willesden.

At foot each tiny blade grew big
And taller stood to hear,
And every leaf on every twig
Was like a little ear.

As I too paused, and both ways tried
To catch the rippling rain,--
So still, a hare kept at my side
His tussock of disdain,--

Behind me close I heard a step,
A soft pit-pat surprise,
And looking round my eyes fell deep
Into sweet other eyes;

The eyes like wells, where sun lies too,
So clear and trustful brown,
Without a bubble warning you
That here's a place to drown.

"How many miles?" Her broken shoes
Had told of more than one.
She answered like a dreaming Muse,
"I came from Islington."

"So long a tramp?" Two gentle nods,
Then seemed to lift a wing,
And words fell soft as willow-buds,
"I came to find the Spring."

A timid voice, yet not afraid
In ways so sweet to roam,
As it with honey bees had played
And could no more go home.

Her home! I saw the human lair,
I heard the hucksters bawl,
I stifled with the thickened air
Of bickering mart and stall.

Without a tuppence for a ride,
Her feet had set her free.
Her rags, that decency defied,
Seemed new with liberty.

But she was frail. Who would might note
The trail of hungering
That for an hour she had forgot
In wonder of the Spring.