Songs of a Girl by Mary Carolyn Davies | Poets.org

Perhaps, God, planting Eden, Dropped, by mistake, a seed

December 21, 2013 1:16 pm

I

Perhaps,

God, planting Eden,

Dropped, by mistake, a seed

In Time’s neighbor-plot,

That grew to be

This hour?

 

II

You and I picked up Life and looked at it curiously;

We did not know whether to keep it for a plaything or not.

It was beautiful to see, like a red firecracker,

And we knew, too, that it was lighted.

We dropped it while the fuse was still burning …

 

III

I am going to die too, flower, in a little while–

Do not be so proud.

 

IV

The sun is dying

Alone

On an island

In the bay.

 

Close your eyes, poppies–

I would not have you see death.

You are so young!

 

V

The sun falls

Like a drop of blood

From some hero.

 

We,

Who love pain,

Delight in this.

 

About This Poem

“Songs of a Girl” appeared in 1917 in The New Poetry: An Anthology, edited by Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin Henderson, the editors of Poetry Magazine. Davies’s poetry often explored gender, nature, and war.

Mary Carolyn Davies was born in 1888 in Sprague, Washington.

She graduated from Washington High School in Portland in 1910 and spent a year teaching before enrolling at the University of California, Berkeley in 1911. During the 1920s, Davies’s short stories and poems were published in Collier’s, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, McClure’s, andPoetry, and in many anthologies. After moving to New York City in the 1930s, Davies published very little and reportedly lived in poverty until her death.