Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Cornhuskers. 1918.

26. Adelaide Crapsey

AMONG the bumble-bees in red-top hay, a freckled field of brown-eyed Susans dripping yellow leaves in July,

I read your heart in a book.

And your mouth of blue pansy—I know somewhere I have seen it rain-shattered.

And I have seen a woman with her head flung between her naked knees, and her head held there listening to the sea, the great naked sea shouldering a load of salt.

And the blue pansy mouth sang to the sea:

Mother of God, I’m so little a thing,

Let me sing longer,

Only a little longer.

And the sea shouldered its salt in long gray combers hauling new shapes on the beach sand.