 | Early and late poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary |  |
SYLVIA.
Lone among the evening shades,
Brown and purple, red and gray,
Went the tender Sylvia,
Fairest of the rustic maids,
Driving home her pastured cows:
Close along the drooping boughs
Of a black, enchanted grove,
Went she, dreaming dreams of love,
Dreaming dreams about a lover,—
Went she, treading down the clover,
Ivy buds and daisies fair,
And wild violets, unaware,—
Went she, slowly, with her cows,
Treading through the round red clover.
Ah, to see her thoughtful brows,
And her sweet mouth, was to love her!
In the black, enchanted grove
Lived a spirit dressed with clay,
And to see her was to love;
So he sang a herdsman's lay,
Bringing all her cows that way.
Brown and purple, red and gray,
Went the tender Sylvia,
Fairest of the rustic maids,
Driving home her pastured cows:
Close along the drooping boughs
Of a black, enchanted grove,
Went she, dreaming dreams of love,
Dreaming dreams about a lover,—
Went she, treading down the clover,
Ivy buds and daisies fair,
And wild violets, unaware,—
Went she, slowly, with her cows,
Treading through the round red clover.
Ah, to see her thoughtful brows,
And her sweet mouth, was to love her!
62
Lived a spirit dressed with clay,
And to see her was to love;
So he sang a herdsman's lay,
Bringing all her cows that way.
Of their meeting, if they met,
Not a word the story tells,—
But of days in clouds that set,
And of winds in gusty swells
Driving madly every way,—
And of cattle gone astray
In the rainy woods; of skies
Shutting all their golden eyes;
And of moanings in the air,
That did seem, the story says,
For some lost soul—let us pray
That it was not Sylvia's.
Not a word the story tells,—
But of days in clouds that set,
And of winds in gusty swells
Driving madly every way,—
And of cattle gone astray
In the rainy woods; of skies
Shutting all their golden eyes;
And of moanings in the air,
That did seem, the story says,
For some lost soul—let us pray
That it was not Sylvia's.
| Early and late poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary | |