Mary White Slater

AH, little barefoot sandals brown and still,

Do you long to be a-roaming on the hill,

Flashing down the garden way,

Fellows with the winds at play—

Are you weary waiting wingless, silent, chill?

When the morning mounts and makes the old earth sweet

With the lilt of laughing children in the street,

Do you ache to join them there,

To be twinkling down the stair

To the darling dancing gladness of her feet?

Do you know the asters troop in purple gloom,

Too late to greet the love that bade them bloom?—

That they wonder, watch and wait

At the quiet garden-gate,

While you weary in the lonely upper room?

Ah, hapless little shoes that held my all,

My joy of life within your trappings small,

Where’s the lithe and lovely thing

That each morning lent you wing?

Are you weary waiting wingless for her call?