Page:Poems, now first collected, Stedman, 1897.djvu/177

LA SOURCE Bent to the work their bodies, bare

And brown, nor thought our gaze to shun,—

Save that an elfish withered one,

Scolding the white-toothed girls, set free

Her tongue, and bade them now have done

With saucy pranks, nor wanton be

Before us stranger folk from over sea.

But on the sward one rose full length

From her sole covering, and stood

Defiant in the beauteous strength

Of nature unabashed: a nude

And wilding slip of womanhood.

Now for the master-hand, that shaped

The Indian Hunter in his wood,

To mould that lissome form undraped

Ere from its grace the sure young lines escaped!

Straight as the aloe's crested shoot

That blooms a golden month and dies,

She stayed an instant, with one foot

On tiptoe, poising statue-wise,

And stared, and mocked us with her eyes,—

While rippling to her hip's firm swell

The mestee hair, that so outvies 157