Afterwhiles | Page 4

they romped and ran about,?Like two boys when school is out,?With glowing face, and lisping lip,?Low laugh, and lifted shout!
And the South Wind-- he was dressed?With a ribbon round his breast?That floated, flapped and fluttered?In a riotous unrest,?And a drapery of mist?From the shoulder and the wrist?Flowing backward with the motion?Of the waving hand he kissed.
And the Sun had on a crown?Wrought of gilded thistle-down,?And a scarf of velvet vapor,?And a ravelled-rainbow gown;?And his tinsel-tangled hair,?Tossed and lost upon the air,?Was glossier and flossier?Than any anywhere.
And the South Wind's eyes were two?Little dancing drops of dew,?As he puffed his cheeks, and pursed his lips,?And blew and blew and blew!?And the Sun's-- like diamond-stone,?Brighter yet than ever known,?As he knit his brows and held his breath,?And shone and shone and shone!
And this pair of merry fays?Wandered through the summer days;?Arm-in-arm they went together?Over heights of morning haze--?Over slanting slopes of lawn?They went on and on and on,?Where the daisies looked like star-tracks?Trailing up and down the dawn.
And where'er they found the top?Of a wheat-stalk droop and lop?They chucked it underneath the chin?And praised the lavish crop,?Till it lifted with the pride?Of the heads it grew beside,?And then the South Wind and the Sun?Went onward satisfied.
Over meadow-lands they tripped,?Where the dandelions dipped?In crimson foam of clover-bloom,?And dripped and dripped and dripped;?And they clinched the bumble-stings,?Gauming honey on their wings,?And bundling them in lily-bells,?With maudlin murmurings.
And the humming-bird that hung?Like a jewel up among?The tilted honeysuckle-horns,?They mesmerized, and swung?In the palpitating air,?Drowsed with odors strange and rare,?And with whispered laughter, slipped away,?And left him hanging there.
And they braided blades of grass?Where the truant had to pass;?And they wriggled through the rushes?And the reeds of the morass,?Where they danced, in rapture sweet,?O'er the leaves that laid a street?Of undulant mosaic for?The touches of their feet.
By the brook with mossy brink?Where the cattle came to drink.?They trilled and piped and whistled?With the thrush and bobolink,?Till the kine in listless pause,?Switched their tails in mute applause,?With lifted heads and dreamy eyes,?And bubble-dripping jaws.
And where the melons grew,?Streaked with yellow, green and blue?These jolly sprites went wandering?Through spangled paths of dew;?And the melons, here and there,?They made love to, everywhere?Turning their pink souls to crimson?With caresses fond and fair.
Over orchard walls they went,?Where the fruited boughs were bent?Till they brushed the sward beneath them?Where the shine and shadow blent;?And the great green pear they shook?Till the sallow hue forsook?Its features, and the gleam of gold?Laughed out in every look.
And they stroked the downy cheek?Of the peach, and smoothed it sleek,?And flushed it into splendor;?And with many an elfish freak,?Gave the russet's rust a wipe--?Prankt the rambo with a stripe,?And the wine-sap blushed its reddest?As they spanked the pippins ripe.
Through the woven ambuscade?That the twining vines had made,?They found the grapes, in clusters,?Drinking up the shine and shade--?Plumpt like tiny skins of wine,?With a vintage so divine?That the tongue of fancy tingled?With the tang of muscadine.
And the golden-banded bees,?Droning o'er the flowery leas,?They bridled, reigned, and rode away?Across the fragrant breeze,?Till in hollow oak and elm?They had groomed and stabled them?In waxen stalls oozed with dews?Of rose and lily-stem.
Where the dusty highway leads,?High above the wayside weeds?They sowed the air with butterflies?Like blooming flower-seeds,?Till the dull grasshopper sprung?Half a man's height up, and hung?Tranced in the heat, with whirring wings,?And sung and sung and sung!
And they loitered, hand in hand,?Where the snipe along the sand?Of the river ran to meet them?As the ripple meets the land,?Till the dragon-fly, in light?Gauzy armor, burnished bright,?Came tilting down the waters?In a wild, bewildered flight.
And they heard the killdee's call,?And afar, the waterfall,?But the rustle of a falling leaf?They heard above it all;?And the trailing willow crept?Deeper in the tide that swept?The leafy shallop to the shore,?And wept and wept and wept!
And the fairy vessel veered?From its moorings-- tacked and steered?For the centre of the current?Sailed away and disappeared:?And the burthen that it bore?From the long-enchanted shore--?"Alas! The South Wind and the Sun!"?I murmur evermore.
For the South Wind and the Sun,?Each so loves the other one,?For all his jolly folly?And frivolity and fun,?That our love for them they weigh?As their fickle fancies may,?And when at last we love them most,?They laugh and sail away.
The Lost Kiss
I put by the half-written poem,?While the pen, idly trailed in my hand,?Writes on--, "Had I words to complete it,?Who'd read it, or who'd understand?"?But the little bare feet on the stairway,?And the faint, smothered laugh in the hall,?And the eerie-low lisp on the silence,?Cry up to me over it all.
So I gather it up-- where was broken?The tear-faded thread of my theme,?Telling how, as one night I sat writing,?A fairy broke in on my dream,?A little inquisitive fairy--?My own little girl, with the gold?Of the sun in her hair, and the dewy?Blue eyes of the fairies