Oh chica of New England snows!
Fair tropical Latina rose;
Green palms, of some warm distant clime
Shine from your eyes in wintertime.
Thy childhood in that tropic place,
Hath blessed thee with a dusky grace;
And all your pre-Columbian past
Must winter’s slushy chill outlast.
The rushing cars who make their way
Insult you with a frigid spray;
As from some humble task you wait
To catch the bus and change your fate.
Thy beauty, late transplanted, glows
To melt these white midwinter snows;
And cumbias from some southern zone
Sound from your soul with pulsing tone.
Your Christian heart, in solitude,
Has all our frozen land imbued;
America’s own breadth and length—
With campesina faith and strength.
❄ I wanted to rewrite a favorite poem:
Oh fairest of the rural maids!
Thy birth was in the forest shades;
Green boughs, and glimpses of the sky,
Were all that met thine infant eye.
Thy sports, thy wanderings, when a child,
Were even in the sylvan wild;
And all the beauty of the place
Is in thy heart and on thy face.
The twilight of the trees and rocks
Is in the light shade of thy locks;
Thy step is as the wind, that weaves
Its playful way among the leaves.
Thine eyes are springs, in whose serene
And silent waters heaven is seen;
Their lashes are the herbs that look
On their young figures in the brook.
The forest depths, by foot unpressed,
Are not more sinless than thy breast;
The holy peace, that fills the air
Of those calm solitudes, is there.
William Cullen Bryant (1794—1878)
CONNECT/HOOK 