If I grow bitterly, Like a gnarled and stunted tree, Bearing harshly of my youth Puckered fruit that sears the mouth; If I make of my drawn boughs An inhospitable house, Out of which I never pry Towards the water and the sky, Under which I stand and hide And hear the day go by outside; It is that a wind too strong Bent my back when I was young, It is that I fear the rain Lest it blister me again. THE GOOSE-GIRL Spring rides no horses down the hill, But comes on foot, a goose-girl still. And all the loveliest things there be Come simply, so, it seems to me. If ever I said, in grief or pride, I tired of honest things, I lied; And should be cursed forevermore With Love in laces, like a whore, And neighbors cold, and friends unsteady, And Spring on horseback, like a lady! THE DRAGONFLY I wound myself in a white cocoon of singing, All day long in the brook’s uneven bed, Measuring out my soul in a mucous thread; Dimly now to the brook’s green bottom clinging, Men behold me, a worm spun-out and dead, Walled in an iron house of silky singing. Nevertheless at length, O reedy shallows, Not as a plodding nose to the slimy stem, But as a brazen wing with a spangled hem, Over the jewel-weed and the pink marshmallows, Free of these and making a song of them, I shall arise, and a song of the reedy shallows! PART TWO DEPARTURE It’s little I care what path I take, And where it leads it’s little I care; But out of this house, lest my heart break, I must go, and off somewhere. It’s little I know what’s in my heart, What’s in my mind it’s little I know, But there’s that in me must up and start, And it’s little I care where my feet go. I wish I could walk for a day and a night, And find me at dawn in a desolate place With never the rut of a road in sight, Nor the roof of a house, nor the eyes of a face. I wish I could walk till my blood should spout, And drop me, never to stir again, On a shore that is wide, for the tide is out, And the weedy rocks are bare to the rain. But dump or dock, where the path I take Brings up, it’s little enough I care; And it’s little I’d mind the fuss they’ll make, Huddled dead in a ditch somewhere. _“Is something the matter, dear,” she said,_ _“That you sit at your work so silently?”_ _“No, mother, no, ’twas a knot in my thread._ _There goes the kettle, I’ll make the tea.”_ THE RETURN FROM TOWN As I sat down by Saddle Stream To bathe my dusty feet there, A boy was standing on the bridge Any girl would meet there. As I went over Woody Knob And dipped into the hollow, A youth was coming up the hill Any maid would follow. Then in I turned at my own gate,-- And nothing to be sad for-- To such a man as any wife Would pass a pretty lad for. A VISIT TO THE ASYLUM Once from a big, big building, When I was small, small, The queer folk in the windows Would smile at me and call.