So up I got in anger,
  And took a book I had,
And put a ribbon on my hair
  To please a passing lad,
And, “One thing there’s no getting by—­
I’ve been a wicked girl,” said I;
“But if I can’t be sorry, why,
  I might as well be glad!”

Daphne

Why do you follow me?—­
Any moment I can be
Nothing but a laurel-tree.

Any moment of the chase
I can leave you in my place
A pink bough for your embrace.

Yet if over hill and hollow
Still it is your will to follow,
I am off;—­to heel, Apollo!

Portrait by a Neighbor

Before she has her floor swept
  Or her dishes done,
Any day you’ll find her
  A-sunning in the sun!

It’s long after midnight
  Her key’s in the lock,
And you never see her chimney smoke
  Till past ten o’clock!

She digs in her garden
  With a shovel and a spoon,
She weeds her lazy lettuce
  By the light of the moon,

She walks up the walk
  Like a woman in a dream,
She forgets she borrowed butter
  And pays you back cream!

Her lawn looks like a meadow,
  And if she mows the place
She leaves the clover standing
  And the Queen Anne’s lace!

Midnight Oil

Cut if you will, with Sleep’s dull knife,
  Each day to half its length, my friend,—­
The years that Time takes off my life,
  He’ll take from off the other end!

The Merry Maid

Oh, I am grown so free from care
  Since my heart broke! 
I set my throat against the air,
  I laugh at simple folk!

There’s little kind and little fair
  Is worth its weight in smoke
To me, that’s grown so free from care
  Since my heart broke!

Lass, if to sleep you would repair
  As peaceful as you woke,
Best not besiege your lover there
  For just the words he spoke
To me, that’s grown so free from care
  Since my heart broke!

To Kathleen

Still must the poet as of old,
In barren attic bleak and cold,
Starve, freeze, and fashion verses to
Such things as flowers and song and you;

Still as of old his being give
In Beauty’s name, while she may live,
Beauty that may not die as long
As there are flowers and you and song.

To S. M. If he should lie a-dying

I am not willing you should go
Into the earth, where Helen went;
She is awake by now, I know. 
Where Cleopatra’s anklets rust
You will not lie with my consent;
And Sappho is a roving dust;
Cressid could love again; Dido,
Rotted in state, is restless still: 
You leave me much against my will.