 | The poetical works of Lucy Larcom |  |
THE TAMBOURINE-GIRL.
I remember a dear little girl
Whose feet kept time to a tambourine,
The sunless walls of the street between.
Her hair had a breezy curl,
Her brown eye was merry and wild,
That gay little child
Who danced up and down
The brick-red walks of the tiresome town.
Whose feet kept time to a tambourine,
The sunless walls of the street between.
Her hair had a breezy curl,
Her brown eye was merry and wild,
That gay little child
Who danced up and down
The brick-red walks of the tiresome town.
I watched her day after day;
And I wished I could have her for my own,
To dance in the fields, among daisies blown,
With the wind in her hair at play,
And her heart as light as a breeze,
Swaying under the trees
Unto bird-notes, swung
Through the blossomed boughs that above her hung.
And I wished I could have her for my own,
To dance in the fields, among daisies blown,
With the wind in her hair at play,
And her heart as light as a breeze,
Swaying under the trees
Unto bird-notes, swung
Through the blossomed boughs that above her hung.
That little motherless maid!
(No mother would let her darling go
Through the wicked streets of the city so)
I know not where she has strayed;
But her memory shadows my dreams,
And her brown eye gleams
Upon me in reproof
That I hold so long from her fate aloof.
(No mother would let her darling go
Through the wicked streets of the city so)
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But her memory shadows my dreams,
And her brown eye gleams
Upon me in reproof
That I hold so long from her fate aloof.
Every sweet little girl I see
Growing up like a rose at a cottage-door,
Or softly at play on the forest floor,
Or under the orchard tree,
Seems to murmur in my ear,
So sadly, so clear!
“Alas! we miss a mate!
For the dear little dancing girl we wait.”
Growing up like a rose at a cottage-door,
Or softly at play on the forest floor,
Or under the orchard tree,
Seems to murmur in my ear,
So sadly, so clear!
“Alas! we miss a mate!
For the dear little dancing girl we wait.”
Yet I knew not her home or name;
And one and another passed her by,—
Nobler and richer women than I.—
To whom belongs the blame,
When a blossom of snow and fire
Trodden down in the mire
Of the city is seen?
Ah me! for my child with the tambourine!
And one and another passed her by,—
Nobler and richer women than I.—
To whom belongs the blame,
When a blossom of snow and fire
Trodden down in the mire
Of the city is seen?
Ah me! for my child with the tambourine!
| The poetical works of Lucy Larcom | |