| |
| HIGH on the telephone wires, the paltry pitiful thing | |
| Hangs in rags and tatters and loops of string. | |
| A slight breeze shakes it, but cannot shake it down. | |
| It flutters and flutters forgotten above the town. | |
| |
| I hate a stranded kite, | 5 |
| Picked to the bones where the wind has claws that tear | |
| And the rain has teeth that bite. | |
| A child’s is a great despair! | |
| |
| Such a lot of paste | |
| And twine it took, and wrapping or daily paper, | 10 |
| And twists for its tail, lest it cut too great a caper | |
| Up in the cumulous, out in the bellying, buoying air…. | |
| Now it hangs there! | |
| |
| My dreams are gorgeous kites like the kites Chinese. | |
| I can feel them tug and yank at my brain, in a breeze, | 15 |
| Shaped like serpent-dragons and whiskered tigers and other eccentric glories, | |
| Such as knights and goblins and beasts out of fairy stories; | |
| Hung with golden tinsel, and silver, and bright red firecracker paper, | |
| Each jumper and twister and japer | |
| That cuts its frolic caper | 20 |
| High in the buoyant blue. | |
| And, high as I fly them, I stand a gaper | |
| At other kites. Do you? | |
| |
| My kites are great gilt angels in garments of blue, | |
| With white-feathered wings I scalloped from song-book pages. | 25 |
| They dip and romp | |
| In happy pomp | |
| High over the tossing trees, and the houses too; | |
| And afloat through the silver of night they fling bright gages | |
| At the hornèd stars with their luminous, twinkling graces. | 30 |
| They sway on the traces | |
| Of comets, and nudge the moon, and smile all the while | |
| The same untiring and ineffable smile … | |
| Is it painted upon their faces? | |
| |
| My kites are huge like elephants, small like mice. | 35 |
| I fly them all in a flock, in spite of advice— | |
| The best advice! | |
| They go up in rainbow brilliance and snow-white storms, | |
| In all shapes and forms. | |
| |
| Well, here’s their memento! here’s the superb ideal | 40 |
| Clutched by the real! | |
| That frail little skeleton flutters between the wires | |
| Till the eyesight tires…. | |
| |
| I turn to go— | |
| Somewhat dashed, somewhat dashed, you know! | 45 |
| But regard that bright | |
| Bulge of gold-lit glory that soars o’er those roofs, so white! | |
| Get a golden cord! I must have that cloud for a kite! | |
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