Playmates

Katharine Lee Bates 1859 (Falmouth) – 1929 (Wellesley)



SUMMER fervors slacken;
Sumac torches dim;
There's bronze upon the bracken;
September has a whim
For carmine, pearl and amber
Touches on her green;
Busy squirrels clamber;
Restless birds convene.
Where Indian pipe still blanches,
Where hoary lichen flakes
Forest trunks and branches,
The golden foxglove makes
A mimic wood that tosses
Warning to the trees,
Then droops upon the mosses,
Heavy with bloom and bees.
What rumbelow of revel
Deep in those honey-jars!
A saffron moth, with level
And languid motion, stars
The air until he settles
At the last pink-clover inn,
Ignoring prouder petals
That would his favor win.
Among those wildwood vagrants
I strolled, alone no more.
Was it the sweet-fern fragrance
That stirred a long-sealed door
Of Time's enchanted tower?
A little maid ran free
And for one sunny hour
My childhood played with me.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

42 sec read
105

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABABCDCDEEEEEEEEFEFEEGEGEHEHCICI
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 818
Words 141
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 32

Katharine Lee Bates

Katharine Lee Bates is remembered as the author of the words to the anthem America the Beautiful Bates was born in Falmouth Massachusetts and lived as an adult on Centre Street in Newton Massachusetts An historic plaque marks the site of her home The daughter of a Congregational pastor she graduated from Wellesley College in 1880 and for many years was a professor of English literature at Wellesley While teaching there she was elected a member of the newly formed Pi Gamma Mu honor society for the social sciences because of her interest in history and politics for which she also studied She lived at Wellesley with Katharine Coman who herself was a history and political economy teacher and founder of the Wellesley College Economics department The pair lived together for twenty-five years until Comans death in 1915 It is debated if this relationship was an intimate lesbian relationship as different sources maintain or a platonic relationship called sometimes Boston marriages as the local historical society of her birthplace maintain more…

All Katharine Lee Bates poems | Katharine Lee Bates Books

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