Not for long can I be angry with the most beautiful—
I look out of my vengefulness, and see her so young, so vastly young,
Wandering her fields beside Huron,
Or peering over Mt. Rainier.

Is she in daisies up to her knees?
Do I see that fresh white smile of hers in the morning-shadowed city?
Is this she clinging to the headlight of the locomotive that roars between the pine-lone mountains?
Are her ankles in the wash of sea-weed beside the sea-battered rocks?

Ah! never the curve of a hill but she has just gone beyond it,
And the prairies are as sweet with her as with clover and sage. . . .
Her young breasts are soft against willow-leaves,
Her hands are quicker than birds in the vagueness of the forest.

Whether it is a dream that I have honey-gathered from the years of my days,
Whether it is so, and no dream,
I cannot help the love that goes out of me to these plains and hills,
These coasts, these cities, and these seas.