My pity and my joy are grown alike.
I cannot sweep the strangeness from my heart.
The Moods have laid swift hands across my hair:
The Moods have drawn swift fingers through my heart.
FANNIE STEARNS DAVIS
HILL-FANTASY
SITTETH by the red cairn a brown One, a
hoofed One,
High upon the mountain, where the grasses fail.
Where the ash-trees flourish far their blazing
Bunches to the sun,
A brown One, a hoofed One, pipes against the gale.
Up scrambled I then, furry fingers helping me.
I was on the mountain, wandering, wandering;
No one but the pine trees and the white birch knew.
Over rocks I scrambled, looked up and saw that
Strange Thing,
Peaked ears and sharp horns, pricked against the
blue.
Oh, and, how he piped there! piped upon the high
reeds
Till the blue air crackled like a frost-film on a pool!
Oh, and how he spread himself, like a child whom
no one heeds,
Tumbled chuckling in the brook, all sleek and kind
and cool!
He had berries 'twixt his horns, crimson-red as
cochineal.,
Bobbing, wagging wantonly they tickled him, and oh,
How his deft lips puckered round the reed,
seemed to chase and steal
Sky-music, earth-music, tree-music low!
I said "Good-day, Thou!" He said, "Good-day,
Thou!"
Wiped his reed against the spotted doe-skin on his back,
He said, "Come up here, and I will teach thee piping
now.
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