GATHERING PEACHES
Gone! and for good.... Why not, pray? Youth and courage, and push,
Where was his chance, stagnating here with us in the Bush?
No—You were born for battle, boy! I wouldn’t have had you bide.
I wouldn’t stint you of glory, nor yet myself of pride!
O you faces of famous men, his hands hung here on the wall,
Only a shepherd was he? Ay, but mate to you all!
Go! yes, rise to your own height, Philip—high as ever you can—
But if you never get on one inch, I shall have loved a Man!
Straight: spirited: clean: look’d up at women, and down on lies:
Cool, at a hurry: stuck to things: and took command with his eyes....
Here! let’s get to the peaches—they’ll bottle and serve, in time;
But, what can you do with an unsunn’d love, and a hope pluck’d ere its prime?
Do? Well, anyway, bottle ’em up! Whether for future food,
Who’s to know? But it may be so,—for it’s got to do me good!
It’s just not going to cripple or break me—it shan’t! it’s to make me strong;
For it ’ud be wronging you, Phil, to let it do me a wrong.
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