Its little life to peck and pipe
As long as cherries ripe and ripe,
And minister unto the need
Of baby-birds that feed and feed.
This, Fragoletta, is a flower,
Open and fragrant for an hour,
A flower, a transitory thing,
Each petal fleeting as a wing,
All a May morning blows and blows,
And then for everlasting goes.


IV

Blue eyes, against the whiteness pressed
Of little mother's hallowed breast,
The while your trembling lips are fed,
Look up at mother's bended head,
All benediction over you--
blue eyes looking into blue!
Fragoletta is so small,
We wonder that she lives at all--
Tiny alabaster girl,
Hardly bigger than a pearl;
That is why we take such care,
Lest someone runs away with her.


V