Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ANNIE, by EDWIN FORD PIPER


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ANNIE, by                    
First Line: Maybe nine years, her hair in yellow braids
Last Line: Sang to her doll a formal lullaby.


Maybe nine years, her hair in yellow braids,
Blue eyes that smiled and wondered. Unto her
The prairie had a spirit; its wild dells
Might catch you, lose you; and its pathless slopes
Swung twenty miles, and melting into sky
Curtained a world of marvels.

She had heard
Her father and her mother speak of such.
The pictures, too, in the geography
Entranced her. How conceive Gibraltar Rock,
Straight up a hundred times as high as the house?
The water roared and foamed at Hinton's Dam;
Niagara then -- And her one fairy book
Read all to pieces, rendered little clue
To the wide prairies and their witchery.

She heard the crane's cry, and the wild goose note,
The grouse make love at dawn ere April came,
The groans of nighthawks, screaming of killdeer,
Twittering of swallows, blackbirds' cheerful call.
The flowers were her good gossips; violets,
The buffalo peas, sheep sorrel, spiderwort;
The milky sheen of poppies, red moss rose
A mellow velvet, spikes of blazing star;
The evening primrose delicately pale;
The Spanish bayonet's spire of drooping bells;
The sensitive plant's red ball o'erspiced with gold;
Voluptuous yellow of the honey cups
The cactus guards; plain-thinking goldenrod.

For playmates a cat, solemnity on four legs,
And a doll for which her needle made awkward seams.
She read and wrote, filled pages with criss-cross,
Knitted on spools, helped mother, hunted eggs;
Learned one by one all the beatitudes,
Abou, A Psalm of Life, and Lucy Gray;
Was patient over faults in featherstitch
If mother's mellow voice sang sweet old songs.

Sometimes she changed a timid, helpless word
With little girls at church; or rarer still,
An old-time visit gave for a whole half-day
Some child for comrade.

Of the world beyond
The horizon she had fancies. It was bright,
Strange, and exciting like the stories told
In twilight by her father; never sad,
Nor lonely; full of romance and of dreams.
In the long lingering sunset I have seen
The steady eyes and wistful mouth appeal
One moment to the colors of the heavens
For answer, ere the dimple of her cheek
Was found by her father's lips, or the childish voice
Sang to her doll a formal lullaby.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net