I HAD a date with Spring.
She put me to the test
By wayward loitering
Then turning up half dressed:
A little smock she wore
Of pink and white peach blossom.
A smock that did far more
To show than hide her bosom.
The way she wore it on
Her barely curving holly
You’d think she had been drawn
By Sandro Botticelli.
And, oh, her rippling hair!
Her hair was long and yellow:
It lightened all the air
As doth the early willow.
I thought, with much surprise,
She looks so young and wildish.
With April in her eyes
And gangling limbs still childish.
She never meant to meet
In time for us to marry;
And that delayed her feet.
And that’s what made her tarry.
She smiled and said, “I’m here.
I kept the time we dated.
Now is there anywhere
To go to and be mated?”
I said, “In brain and tongue
Of yours not yet has sap lain.
Who’d marry one so young
Unless he were a chaplain?”
She shook her upraised arm.
And up her smock of pink went,
I saw, for all her charm,
A juvenile delinquent.
She said, “You are too brash
To meet and scorn a lady:
You old, white-headed trash!
You old cane-sugar daddy!
Supposing I am slow
In coming into action,
You cannot say that snow
To Spring is an attraction.
I have another dale.”
She swished her seamy habit.
But she will pullulate
When I am old and crabbed.
I did not try to match
Her words, but muttered, “Pardie!”
When snow is on the thatch
No wonder Spring is tardy.