New England

Here where the wind is always north-north-east

And children learn to walk on frozen toes,

Wonder begets an envy of all those

Who boil elsewhere with such a lyric yeast

Of love that you will hear them at a feast

Where demons would appeal for some repose,

Still clamoring where the chalice overflows

And crying wildest who have drunk the least.

Passion is here a soilure of the wits,

We're told, and Love a cross for them to bear;

Joy shivers in the corner where she knits

And Conscience always has the rocking-chair,

Cheerful as when she tortured into fits

The first cat that was ever killed by Care.

E.A. Robinson