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Tangled
in Stars
Poems
by
Ethelwyn Wetherald
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IF
ONE MIGHT LIVE
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If one might live ten years among the leaves,
Ten—only ten—of
all a life’s long day,
Who would not choose a childhood ’neath the
eaves,
Low-sloping to some slender
footpath way?
With the young grass about his childish feet,
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And
the young lambs within his ungrown arms,
And every streamlet side a pleasure seat
Within the wide day’s
treasure-house of charms.
To learn to speak while young birds learned to
sing,
To learn to run e’en
as they learned to fly;
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With
unworn heart against the breast of spring,
To watch the moments smile
as they went by.
Enroofed with apple buds afar to roam,
Or clover-cradled on the
murmurous sod,
To drowse within the blessed fields of home,
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near to earth—so very near to God.
How could it matter—all the after strife,
The heat, the haste, the
inward hurt, the strain,
When the young loveliness and sweet of life
Came flood-like back again
and yet again?
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When best begins it liveth through the worst;
O happy soul, beloved of
Memory,
Whose youth was joined to beauty, as at first,
The morning stars were wed
to harmony. [Page 37]
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