Just fancy hearing daily
That velvet voice of hers! 
How do you quell the riot
Of sap her coming stirs?

Perhaps she puts her face up,
(Dear Charity she is!)
For messages of summer
And better worlds than this.

You cannot blush, poor Lilac;
It is not in your race. 
I simply should go crimson,
If I were in your place.

Do tell her all your secrets! 
The Man declares she knows
Better than any mortal
The wonder-trick of prose.

Our prose, I mean,—­how beauty
Appears to you and me;
The truth that seems so simple,
Which they call poetry.

They put it down in writing
And label it with tags,
The funny conscious people
Who mask in colored rags!

They have a thing called science,
With phrases strange and pat. 
My dear, can you imagine
Intelligence like that?

And when they first discover
That yellows are not greens,
They pucker up their foreheads
And ponder what it means.

And then those cave-like places,
Churches and Capitols,
Where they all come together
Like troops of talking dolls,

To govern, as they term it,
(It’s really very odd!)
And have what they call worship
Of something they call God.

But Kitty, or whatever
May be her tender name,
Is more like us.  She guesses
What sets the year aflame.

She knows beyond her senses;
Do tell her all you can! 
The funny people need it,—­
At least, so says The Man.

Good-by, dear.  I must idle. 
Sweet suns and happy rains! 
How nice to have these humans
With their inventive brains,—­

Their little scraps of paper! 
They certainly evince
Remarkable discernment. 
Your ever loving Quince.

AN EASTER MARKET.

Today, through your Easter market
In the lazy Southern sun,
I strolled with hands in pockets
Past the flower-stalls one by one.

Indolent, dreamy, ready
For anything to amuse,
Shyfoot out for a ramble
In his oldest hat and shoes.

Roses creamy and yellow,
Azaleas crimson and white,
And the flaky fresh carnations
My Orient of delight,—­

Masses and banks of blossom
That dazzle and summon the eye,
Till the buyers are half bewildered
To know what they want.  Not I.

Who would not rather be artist
And slip through the crowd unseen
To gather it all in a picture
And guess what the faces mean?

So down through the chaffering darkies
I pass to the sidewalk’s end,
Through the smiling gingham bonnets
With their small farm-stuff to vend.

When, hello! my dreamer, sudden
As call at the dead of night,
What sets your pulses a-quiver,
What sets your fancy alight?

Sure of it!  Mayflowers, mayflowers,
Scent of the North in spring! 
Out in the vernal distance,
Heart of me, whither a-wing?