The Sand Piper
Quaint manikin, what bids you keep
Such formal distance with your droll
Divertisements, the while I stroll
In solitude beside the deep?
Your mannerisms first suggest
A Puritan sedate and prim;
Then change you by capricious whim
Into a gnome with hooded crest,
Or bit of animated foam,
Or e’en a cloud wisp drifting by, -
What region in the sea or sky
Or lonely dune can you call home?
Your footsteps mincing gleefully
Thread in and out along the verge
Embroidering the creamy surge, -
Strange little old man of the sea!
But in your antic frolicking,
Your beak grotesque and solemn eye,
Your stilt-like legs, your piping cry,
And sudden ecstasies of wing,
There is a kinship with the spray
Wind driven, and the restless sand,
A mingling of the sea and land,
The hither and the far away.
Blithe atomy, bold Nature’s child
Within you pulses glad and free
With joyous spontaneity
The tameless spirit of the wild!