A Song of Little Girls

I want to make a song of the little girls

That live about this quarter.

I could make a song of boys quite easily with words,

But words are too blunt for such delicate things as girls.

I would like to make my song of them with bees and butterflies.

One looks at the boy, and says Boy;

And lo, one has described him.

But little girls are morning light and melody;

Their happy hair flutters and flies, or curtains their laughing faces —

Faces glad as the sun at dawn.

Their clear, cool skin is like wine to the eyes,

The lines of their fluent limbs run like a song,

And every step is a note of grace which the frock repeats.

Do n't you think it a pity, and greatly to be deplored

That these should lose this beauty,

And pass from it to the guile and trickery of woman?