| Jessie B. Rittenhouse, ed. (1869–1948). The Little Book of Modern Verse. 1917. |
| |
| 17. May Is Building Her House |
| | | By Richard Le Gallienne |
| |
| |
| MAY is building her house. With apple blooms | |
| She is roofing over the glimmering rooms; | |
| Of the oak and the beech hath she builded its beams, | |
| And, spinning all day at her secret looms, | |
| With arras of leaves each wind-swayed wall | 5 |
| She pictureth over, and peopleth it all | |
| With echoes and dreams, | |
| And singing of streams. | |
| |
| May is building her house. Of petal and blade, | |
| Of the roots of the oak, is the flooring made, | 10 |
| With a carpet of mosses and lichen and clover, | |
| Each small miracle over and over, | |
| And tender, traveling green things strayed. | |
| |
| Her windows, the morning and evening star, | |
| And her rustling doorways, ever ajar | 15 |
| With the coming and going | |
| Of fair things blowing, | |
| The thresholds of the four winds are. | |
| |
| May is building her house. From the dust of things | |
| She is making the songs and the flowers and the wings; | 20 |
| From October’s tossed and trodden gold | |
| She is making the young year out of the old, | |
| Yea: out of winter’s flying sleet | |
| She is making all the summer sweet, | |
| And the brown leaves spurned of November’s feet | 25 |
| She is changing back again to spring’s. | |
| |
|
|
|
