Here where the rooms are dryly still
Who is this dustily asleep
While juicy children run the field?
Where is her ever deepening well
Whose buckets to a fullness dip
For needs compassion must fulfill?
Like freshets they themselves may yield
A little to the turned up cup,
But death is in the long dry spell.
Run children, run, the light grows dull,
And she who keeps the well must sleep,
And rain is unpredictable.
December 1951
