Explore "To Sai" by Frederic Manning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
You chase the blue butterflies, / The shining dew is shaken by your feet, / That are white in the young grasses; / Swift, you hesitate, poised; / And they elude you; fluttering / In the windless gold.
Sai is small, / But a little child, / With little sorrows; / Yet her tears shine with laughter, / Her face comes and goes between the wet leaves, / As a face in sleep / Comes and goes between green shadows, / As moving lights hide and shine in the marshes.
I shall not look at her, / Lest she should hide from mine eyes / In the shadow.
I bring her pale honey in a comb, apples / Sweet and smelling; and leave them beside me; / Then comes she softly.
There is a bee in the willow-weed, / From flower to flower it climbs, and I watch it / Till the honey and apples are eaten.
Sai is quite close to me; now she has gone / She has forgotten me.
Sai is small, / But a little child.