Two Peonies/Girl on the Hill/I Loved the Way

 

Two peonies are blooming under the sky,
But I am too sick with nerves to come by
And loiter with them and ask their pardon
For looking so pale inside their garden:
They would wince, close, lose their beauty, dry;
They would drop their petals, sullen, and sigh:
Goodbye, good child, good-bye, good bye.

Do you know the story of the girl
Who each day climbed the hill beside the birch
To cry about the things that made her sad,
To try and recall what good things she had,
To pour out her soul to an empty church,
To search for God—and search, and search, and search?

I never managed to tell you these things,
But I loved the way that your hair grew long
In the winters and grew short in the springs;
I loved the way that you dined like the kings
But swore like the sailors in a shipman’s throng;
I loved the way that you’d have slipped on our rings—
Pulled from a box all wrapped up with strings—
Had you proposed, and I gone along.
But you were right, and I was wrong,
And this is the end of my remembrance-song.

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