Edith M. Thomas

Apple green bird on a wooden bough, And the brazen sound of a long, loud row, And "Child, take the train, but mind what you do— Frost, tonight, and Sandburg too!" Then I sally forth, half wild, half cowed, Till I come to the surging, impervious crowd, The wine-filled, the temperance, the sober, the pied, The Poets that cover the countryside! The Poets I never would meet till tonight! A gleam of their eyes in the fading light, And I took them all in—the enormous throng— And with one great bound I bolted along. If the garden had merely held birds and flowers! But I hear a voice—they have talked for hours— "Frost tonight—" if 'twere merely he! Half wild, half cowed, I flee, I flee!