The Tryst by Edith Wharton — Read

I said to the woman: Whence do you come, / With your bundle in your hand? / She said: In the North I made my home, / Where slow streams fatten the fruitful loam, / And the endless wheat-fields run like foam / To the edge of the endless sand.

I said: What look have your houses there, / And the rivers that glass your sky? / Do the steeples that call your people to prayer / Lift fretted fronts to the silver air, / And the stones of your streets, are they washed and fair / When the Sunday folk go by?