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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MY BABES IN THE WOOD, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: I know a story, fairer, dimmer, sadder
Last Line: Lost leaves -- why, it is your dead selves I mean!
Alternate Author Name(s): Piatt, Sarah


I KNOW a story, fairer, dimmer, sadder,
Than any story painted in your books.
You are so glad? It will not make you gladder;
Yet listen, with your pretty restless looks.

"Is it a Fairy Story?" Well, half fairy--
At least it dates far back as fairies do,
And seems to me as beautiful and airy;
Yet half, perhaps the fairy half, is true.

You had a baby sister and a brother,
(Two very dainty people, rosily white,
Each sweeter than all things except the other!)
Older yet younger -- gone from human sight!
And I, who loved them, and shall love them ever,
And think with yearning tears how each light hand

Crept toward bright bloom or berries -- I shall never
Know how I lost them. Do you understand?

Poor slightly golden heads! I think I missed them
First, in some dreamy, piteous, doubtful way;
But when and where with lingering lips I kissed them,
My gradual parting, I can never say.

Sometimes I fancy that they may have perished
In shadowy quiet of wet rocks and moss,
Near paths whose very pebbles I have cherished,
For their small sakes, since my most lovely loss.

I fancy, too, that they were softly covered
By robins, out of apple-flowers they knew,
Whose nursing wings in far home sunshine hovered,
Before the timid world had dropped the dew.

Their names were -- what yours are! At this you wonder.
Their pictures are -- your own, as you have seen;
And my bird-buried darlings, hidden under
Lost leaves -- why, it is your dead selves I mean!





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