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Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter

By John Crowe Ransom

There was such speed in her little body,   
And such lightness in her footfall,   
It is no wonder her brown study
Astonishes us all.

Her wars were bruited in our high window.   
We looked among orchard trees and beyond   
Where she took arms against her shadow,   
Or harried unto the pond

The lazy geese, like a snow cloud
Dripping their snow on the green grass,   
Tricking and stopping, sleepy and proud,   
Who cried in goose, Alas,

For the tireless heart within the little   
Lady with rod that made them rise
From their noon apple-dreams and scuttle   
Goose-fashion under the skies!

But now go the bells, and we are ready,   
In one house we are sternly stopped
To say we are vexed at her brown study,   
Lying so primly propped.

Poet Bio

Image of John Crowe Ransom

Poet and Critic John Crowe Ransom grew up in Tennessee and attended Oxford and Vanderbilt University, where he taught for many decades. Though his career as a poet was short—most of his poems were published in a three year period—he enjoyed acclaim throughout his life. His short, traditional lyric poems, often filled with wit and irony, use both mythological allusions and situations from everyday life to examine the metaphysical difficulties of love and death. In poems such as “Janet Waking” he shows the instability of life and the difficulty of understanding its changes.

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