REFRAIN

Sit there and count your fingers.
What can you do?
Old girl, you're through.
Sit there and count your little fingers,
Unlucky little girl blue.
Sit there and count the raindrops
Falling on you.
It's time you knew
All you can count on is the raindrops
That fall on little girl blue.
No use, old girl,
You may as well surrender.
Your hope is getting slender.
Why won't somebody send a tender
Blue boy, to cheer a
Little girl blue?

  TRIO PATTER

When I was very young
The world was younger than I,

Animated glass that drawest nigh
unto the light, with thy life-freezing dark,
and from the fluttering circumference
pantest toward the sudden point of death.

In tiny sea of brightness gulfs of gloom
behold, thou ship that spreadest living sail;
the more funereal night of thy dismay
takes fire from the light thou comest to.

Let not thy coward spirit from the light
in which thou burnest turn aside its wings;
in the fire of thy seeking be consumed.

Joyfully amid its flames flagrate:
for ceasing to be that which thou hast lived

Animal that I am, I come to call
With soft ancestral stride, and smouldering blood,
And guarded nuances of speech that fall
Deftly within the well-bred bounds they should;
While hooded eyes, across a saucer-rim
Of Haviland, with half-insistent stare,
Or insolent slow droop, control and trim
The wick of innuendo in the air.
Pity my brother ape who cannot chat
With one whose smiles so scintillate and arch—
His belly-lusts, his brutal days, and that
Starved ignorance of opera-hats and starch:
But most—for that he crassly snares his mate

As the shadows glide
Over the wheat on the ripe hillside,
So we journey, Life and I:
O sweet youth-time, go not by!

Where the warm winds meet,
To the wreathèd pipe we time our feet;
There we linger, Life and I:
O sweet youth-time, go not by!

Where the grasses play,
Ever we wander away and away,
Singing, laughing, Life and I:
O sweet youth-time, go not by!

The angels in high places
— Who minister to us,
Reflect God's smile, — their faces
— Are luminous;
Save one, whose face is hidden,
— (The Prophet saith),
The unwelcome, the unbidden,
— Azrael, Angel of Death.
And yet that veiled face, I know
— Is lit with pitying eyes,
Like those faint stars, the first to glow,
— Through cloudy winter skies.

That they may never tire,
— Angels, by God's decree,
Bear wings of snow and fire, —
— Passion and purity;
Save one, all unavailing,
— (The Prophet saith),

Angels in Heav'n, as we may say,
Keep one Eternal Holy-Day;
No Fasts there are, nor Vigils there,
But Triumphs are their constant cheer
Yet when their King vouchsaf'd to come,
And make this lower world his home,
They were so kind we know,
To come and keep one holy day below,
Sent on a solemn Embassy, to tell
The world, how great a guest was coming there to dwell.

New Robes of Light, Heav'ns Liv'ry, they
Assume, more bright (by far) than day.
Yet not so bright as those, that there

Angels from the long ago
Told the old, old story
Of a Saviour come to earth
From the realms of glory.

What a message they proclaimed,
Angel hosts so bright,
As the shepherds on the hills
Watched their flocks by night.

Unto you a child is born,
Unto you is given,
Emmanuel, the Son of God,
The Lord Himself, from heaven.

See the gift of God's own love,
Go ye to the manger,
He, who left His home above,
Is to you no stranger.

Ye who sit in darkness, look,
For the Light now shineth,

The angells' eyes, whome veyles cannot deceive,
Might best disclose that best they do descerne;
Men must with sounde and silent faith receive
More then they can by sence or reason lerne;
God's poure our proofes, His workes our witt exceede,
The doer's might is reason of His deede.

A body is endew'd with ghostly rightes;
And Nature's worke from Nature's law is free;
In heavenly sunne lye hidd eternall lightes,
Lightes cleere and neere, yet them no eye can see;
Dedd formes a never-dyinge life do shroude;

Angels, as well as birds, on silent wing
Proceeding through the upper, open air,
Under the full intense celestial glare,
Perceive the true form of each earthly thing;
Birdlike the eye they deftly, subtly fling
Into the distance. Steadily they stare
Unhindered by the circumambient glare, —
Angels as well as birds can sweetly sing.
They too are known to hover above a nest
Wherein the swathed soul of man doth lie
Soft-hidden deep in matter as in wool,
And theirs, too, the prerogative of rest, —
To soothe at times in manner wonderful,

The angels are stooping
Above your bed;
They weary of trooping
With the whimpering dead.

God's laughing in Heaven
To see you so good;
The Sailing Seven
Are gay with his mood.

I sigh that kiss you,
For I must own
That I shall miss you
When you have grown.