S.P.

.

Now this particular girl

During a ceremonious April walk

With her latest suitor

Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck

By the birds' irregular babel

And the leaves' litter.

By this tumult afflicted, she

Observed her lover's gestures unbalance the air,

His gait stray uneven

Through a rank wilderness of fern and flower.

She judged petals in disarray,

The whole season, sloven.

How she longed for winter then!

Scrupulously austere in its order

Of white and black

Ice and rock, each sentiment within border,

And heart's frosty discipline

Exact as a snowflake.

But here--a burgeoning

Unruly enough to pitch her five queenly wits

Into vulgar motley

A treason not to be borne. Let idiots

Reel giddy in bedlam spring:

She withdrew neatly.

And round her house she set

Such a barricade of barb and check

Against mutinous weather

As no mere insurgent man could hope to break

With curse, fist, threat

Or love, either

by S.P.