Page:Southern Life in Southern Literature.djvu/477

 JOHN CHARLES McNEILL 459 In a warm crevice of the bark A basking scorpion clung, With bright blue tail and red-rimmed eyes, And yellow, twinkling tongue. A lunging trout flashed in the sun, To do some petty slaughter, And set the spiders all a-run On little stilts of water. Toward noon upon the swamp there stole A deep, cathedral hush, Save where, from sun-splotched bough and bole, Sweet thrush replied to thrush. An angler came to cast his fly Beneath a baffling tree. I smiled, when I had caught his eye, And he smiled back at me. When stretched beside a shady elm I watched the dozy heat. Nature was moving in her realm, For I could hear her feet.

BAREFOOTED

The girls all like to see the bluets in the lane And the saucy Johnny Jump-ups in the meadow, But we boys, we want to see the dogwood blooms again Throwin a sort of summer-lookin shadow; For the very first mild mornin when the woods are white (And we need n t even ask a soul about it) We leave our shoes right where we pulled them off at night, And, barefooted once again, we run and shout it: