Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SAINT AND SINNER, by MARION DOYLE


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SAINT AND SINNER, by                    
First Line: My sister was a sinner
Last Line: Who? What? How? Where? And when?
Alternate Author Name(s): Doyle, Marion Stauffer
Subject(s): Sisters


My sister was a sinner:
She wore a crimson cloak;
She slept against her lover's breast
Beneath the meadow oak.

The oak spread friendly boughs apart
To let the stars look in --
And not a single star was shocked
To see those lovers sin.

My sister was a sinner:
She walked in silver shoes;
She danced and kissed the nights away
With any lad she'd choose.

My sister died at twenty-one --
They say: "The good die young" --
They, that strange perennial race
With lies upon the tongue.

I, who am conscientious
And meekly go the way
My mother and the parson taught,
Respectable in gray
With sturdy patterns dun or black
That never learned the ways
Of winding paths through starlit woods
Or a cotillion maze;
I, no doubt, shall live to see
My full three-score-and-ten --
Still wondering what life's about --
Who? What? How? Where? and When?





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