​The Crescent Moon

​

​Slipping softly through the sky

​Little horned, happy moon,

​Can you hear me up so high?

​Will you come down soon?

​

​On my nursery window-sill

​Will you stay your steady flight?

​And then float away with me

​Through the summer night?

​Brushing over tops of trees,

​Playing hide and seek with stars,

​Peeping up through shiny clouds

​At Jupiter or Mars.

​

​I shall fill my lap with roses

​Gathered in the milky way,

​All to carry home to mother.

​Oh! What will she say!

​

​Little rocking, sailing moon,

​Do you hear me shout--Ahoy!

​Just a little nearer, moon,

​To please a little boy.

​ --Amy Lowell

​The Caterpillar

​Under this loop of honeysuckle,

​A creeping, colored caterpillar,

​I gnaw the fresh green hawthorn spray,

​I nibble it leaf by leaf away.

​

​Down beneath grow dandelions,

​Daises, old-man's-looking-glasses;

​Rooks flap croaking across the lane,

​I eat and swallow and eat again.

​

Here come raindrops helter-skelter;

I munch and nibble unregarding;

Hawthorn leaves ​are juicy and firm.

​I'll mind by business: I'm a good worm.

​When I'm old, tired, melancholy,

​I'll build a leaf-green mausoleum

​Close by, here on the lovely spray,

​And die and dream the ages away.

​

​Some say worms win resurrection,

​With white wings beating flitter-flutter,

​But wings or a sound sleep, why should I care?

​Either way I'll miss my share.

​

​Under this loop of honeysuckle,

​A hungry, hairy caterpillar,

​I crawl on my high and swinging seat,

​And eat, eat, eat--as one ought to eat.

​ --Robert Graves

​Afternoon on a Hill

​I will be the gladdest thing

​Under the sun!

​I will touch a hundred flowers

​And not pick one.

​And when lights begin to show

​Up from the town,

​I will mark which must be mine,

​And then start down!

​--Edna St. Vincent Millay

​I will look at cliffs and clouds

​With quiet eyes,

​Watch the wind bow down the grass,

​And the grass rise.