I I STOOD at the gate of the cot Where my darling, with side-glance demure, Would spy, on her trim garden-plot, The busy wild things chase and lure. For these with their ways were her feast; They had surety no enemy lurked. Their deftest of tricks to their least She gathered in watch as she worked. II When berries were red on her ash, The blackbird would rifle them rough, Till the ground underneath looked a gash, And her rogue grew the round of a chough. The squirrel cocked ear o'er his hoop, Up the spruce, quick as eye, trailing brush. She knew any tit of the troop All as well as the snail-tapping thrush. III I gazed: 'twas the scene of the frame, With the face, the dear life for me, fled. No window a lute to my name, No watcher there plying the thread. But the blackbird hung pecking at will; The squirrel from cone hopped to cone; The thrush had a snail in his bill, And tap-tapped the shell hard on a stone. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE OLD MEN ADMIRING THEMSELVES IN THE WATER by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS POEM FOR PICTURE: TO AN OIL PAINTING BY WINSLOW HOMER (DRIFTWOOD) by FRANK ANKENBRAND JR. THE STEAM-ENGINE: CANTO 10. THE DEATH OF HUSKISSON by T. BAKER THE STEPS OF THE COMMANDER by ALEXANDER (ALEKSANDR) ALEXANDROVICH BLOK |