"Oh Promise Me".

Faulkner, John

   "Oh Promise Me"

   Ah, Fate: Thou unbosomed jade
   Who promises nothing and forgets so much
   Whose foster child is a noiseless laugh
   Whose deepest thought is a cow and calf

   To some a knave; to some a slut
   Who clothes each promise in obscuring haze
   Whose specious coat is sewn with cotton thread
   Who lives in a rose and whose ink is red

   With malicious glee and cruel thought
   You beckon back twixt the oak and barn
   And the tender green bathed in dew new born
   Is but cocoa grass in the dying corn

   With naive grace you bid us look
   At the pink-tinted strip `neath the stippled shade
   And with eager faith we find but a road
   With a truck bogged down `neath an overload

   And the farthest hill with the bluest haze
   Is a pastel dream on an August day
   And you beckon on with a stately grace
   Thou flour sack beyond a crystal vase