Page 47 - Poetry-Animals

Thou art but a Merry Thought,
Luring pleasures out of nought.
Shivering shadows thou dost woo,
And the dancing sunbeam too;
For all the shadows are to thee
Potent deep reality!
And all the trees in every wood
Just made for blithest kittenhood!

Was thy little silken gown
Spun from floating thistle-down
With its rings of light and dark,
Each a tiny water-mark?
Wavelet though from Fairy ocean,
Ever in a bright commotion.
Thou, for wonder, daily food,
In thy dainty kittenhood.

What a spell of witchery lies
In those wide-orbed saucy eyes!
Magic little mirrors blue
That the sky has looked into.
Art thou fay or prison’d Peri,
Thou that never seemest weary?
Not yet art thou understood
Through each maze of kittenhood.
Shadeless glancing kittenhood!
Blue-eyed dancing kittenhood!

—V.R. (Girl’s Own Paper, 1898)

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