Milking-Time: A Florida Pastoral

THE sun is low and the sky is red ;
Over meadows in rick and mow,
And out of the lush grass overfed,
The cattle are winding slow ;
A milky fragrance about them breathes
As they loiter one by one,
Over the fallow and out of the sheaths
Of the lake-grass in the sun.
And hark, in the distance, the cattle-bells, how musically they steal,—
Jo, Redpepper, Brindle, Browny, and Barleymeal!

From standing in shadowy pools at noon
With the water udder deep,
In the sleepy rivers of easy June,
With the skies above asleep,—
Just a leaf astir on orange or oak,
And the palm-flower thirsting in halves,—
They wait for the signs of the falling smoke,
And the evening bleat of the calves.
And hark, in the distance, the cattle-bells, how musically they steal,—
Jo, Redpepper, Brindle, Browny, and Barleymeal!

O wife, whose wish still lingers and grieves
In the chimes that go and come,
For peace and rest in the twilight eves
When the cattle are loitering home,
How little we knew, in the deepening shades,
How far our ways would lie, —
My own alone in the everglades
And your home there in the sky ;
Nor how I would listen alone to the old familiar peal, —
Jo, Redpepper, Brindle, Browny, and Barleymeal !