University of Virginia Library

THE EVANGELIST

Away with pen! Away with ink!
Come quickly (though I think
The pillow of the bed
Is eager for your head)
Along the passage, through the door,
My Pansy in a pinafore!
Uplift, console, and bless
A weary verseman with your loveliness,
Who's tired by staring hard at words
In songs of rivulets and birds,
And tired by bending over nouns
So long with puzzled frowns
Because his brain desired to give
To each a haunting adjective!
Since tea he might have had,
Instead of prison and a blotting-pad,
The concentrated garden that is styled
(There's heaven in the name) a Child;
And yet the fever in a tune
Robbed him of hours of June.
But now, ere Sleep has webbed and caught
Her truant, let his anxious thought
Refuse to flow along the line
Of old-man's-beard and eglantine;
And let him, thinking how he kissed
Last night the same Evangelist,
Prepare to welcome at the door
A playmate in a pinafore,
And run about his brain to find
Another story of the glowing kind
That fills with buds of thought
The many secret gardens of her mind.