I

If you had seen her waiting there Among the tiger-lily blooms,-- That sowed their jewels everywhere Among the woodland gleams and glooms,-- You had confessed her very fair, And sweeter than the wood’s perfumes.

A country girl with bare brown feet, She waits, while day slopes down the deeps: The afternoon is dead with heat, And all the weary shadow sleeps Like toil, arm-pillowed in the wheat, Beside the scythe with which he reaps.

There is no sound more distant than The cow-bell on the vine-hung hill; No nearer than the locust’s span Of noise that makes the silence shrill: And now there comes a sun-browned man Through tiger-lilies of the rill.

Long will they talk: till, in the end, The clear west glows, the east grows pale; Until the glow and pallor blend Like moonlight on a shifting sail; And then he ’ll clasp her; she will bend Her head, consenting. Day will fail:

The west will flame, then fade away Through heavy orange, rose, and red, And leave the heavens violet gray Above a gypsy-lily bed: Then they will go; and he will say Such words to her as none has said.

A million stars the night will win Above them; and one firefly Pulse like a tangled starbeam in The cedar dark against the sky: Then he will lift her dimpled chin And take the kiss she ’ll not deny.

And when the moon, like the great book Of Judgment, golden with the light Of God, lies open o’er yon nook Of darkest wood and wildest height, Together they will cross the brook And reach the gate and kiss good night.