Read "The Nooning" by Helen Gray Cone online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
OBERON
Oh soft, soft, soft, thou slender-footed maid, / Cool-clad and fair, along the sultry street / At broad blue blinding noon! Light fall thy feet / As e'er the wood-nymphs' fell while Pan was laid / At mid-day in some choice Arcadian shade / Where not an oak-leaf laughed, and if there beat / Loud the wild heart of any Dryad fleet, / Hearing, she girded her warm side afraid! / For where, against yon hourly-growing wall, / Dull-red, the ailantus-blossoms brighter show, / A little while his weariness forgot, / Outstretching in a chosen shadow small, / With hot wet forehead on his lax arm low, / Swart Labor sleeps, without whom thou wert not!