Page:Edna St. Vincent Millay - A Few Figs from Thistles.djvu/20

 THE SINGING-WOMAN FROM THE WOOD'S EDGE

WHAT should I be but a prophet and a liar, Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar? Teethed on a crucifix and cradled under water. What should I be but the fiend's god-daughter?

And who should be my playmates but the adder and the frog, That was got beneath a furze-bush and born in a bog? And what should be my singing, that was christened at an altar, But Aves and Credos and Psalms out of the Psalter?

You will see such webs on the wet grass, maybe, As a pixie-mother weaves for her baby, You will find such flame at the wave's weedy ebb As flashes in the meshes of a mer-mother's web,