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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  William H. Simpson

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The New Day

William H. Simpson

From “In Hopi-land and Other Lands”

THE SWIFT scouts of dawn ride in,

Their lances flame-tipped.

The waning moon shines whitely,

Like thin drifted snow—

And the cradled winds sleepily rub their eyes.

An impatient horse whinnies—

A dog barks, at nothing.

Trails of smoke rise from the kitchen chimney.

The air is washed clean; it smells sweet

With odors of new-mown hay.

A man steps out briskly

From the imprisoned dark of the barn,

Carrying pails brimful of foaming milk.

A woman waits in the doorway;

She is young and comely.

Mewing kittens are tangled in her skirts;

They smell the warm milk.

A baby cries softly upstairs.