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.
Do n'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?