ALICE OF MONMOUTH
The velvet of the strawberry-plot:
Fair and freckled, old and young,
With baskets at their girdles hung,
Searching the plants with no rude haste
Lest berries should hang unpicked, and waste:—
Of the pulpy, odorous, hidden quest,
First gift of the fruity months, and best.
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Crates of the laden baskets cool
Under the trees at the meadow's edge,
Covered with grass and dripping sedge,
And lily-leaves from the shaded pool;
Filled, and ready to be borne
To market before the morrow morn.
Beside them, gazing at the skies,
Hour after hour a young man lies.
From the hillside, under the trees,
He looks across the field, and sees
The waves that ever beyond it climb,
Whitening the rye-slope's early prime;
At times he listens, listlessly,
To the tree-toad singing in the tree,
Or sees the catbird peck his fill
With feathers adroop and roguish bill.
But often, with a pleased unrest,
He lifts his glances to the west,
Watching the kirtles, red and blue,
Which cross the meadow in his view;
And he hears, anon, the busy throng
Sing the Strawberry-Pickers' Song,—
From the far hillside comes again
An echo of the old-time strain.
Sweetly the group their cadence keep;
Swiftly their hands the trailers sweep;
The vines are stripped and the song is sung,
A joyous labor for old and young;
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