AFTERNOON
by: Fannie Stearns Gifford (Davis)
- OME
one is coming to call.
-
- Up the red brick path between daffodils dancing
- I see white ruffles that blow:
- A parasol, dipping against the sun.
- It is some one stout, and warm in her new white gloves.
-
- My old green apron is smudged with the garden-mould.
- My hands are the hands of a peasant-woman. My hair
- Comes tumbling down into my eyes.
-
- I wish I could lie down flat like a child
- And hide in the grass, while she rings and rings,
- And sticks her card under the door with a sigh,
- And puffs away down the path.
- I wish -- but the parasol bobs,
- And she bobs like a mandarin's lady,
- Smiling and bridling and beckoning.
-
- If I were a daffodil, in an apron of green and gold--
-
- But there she stands on the path,
- And her gloves are so new they squeak with newness and stoutness,
- And I know she will talk of the weather and stay an hour--
-
- If I were a daffodil--
- Or a little cool blinking bug
- Down in the daffodil leaves--
"Afternoon" is reprinted
from The Masque of Poets. Ed. Edward J. O'Brien. New York:
Dodd, Mead and Company, 1918. |
MORE POEMS BY FANNIE STEARNS GIFFORD |
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