I want to make a song of the little girls
That live about this quarter.
I could make a song of boys quite easily with words,
But words are too blunt for such delicate things as girls.
I would like to make my song of them with bees and butterflies.
One looks at the boy, and says Boy;
And lo, one has described him.
But little girls are morning light and melody;
Their happy hair flutters and flies, or curtains their laughing faces—
Faces glad as the sun at dawn.
Their clear, cool skin is like wine to the eyes,
The lines of their fluent limbs run like a song,
And every step is a note of grace which the frock repeats.
Don't you think it a pity, and greatly to be deplored
That these should lose this beauty,
And pass from it to the guile and trickery of woman?