A Square Peg

And she said once more, “You cannot go.” Then he turned his face away From beyond the rocks and the blue-green sea, Where a full-rigged vessel lay.

At the farm the house was neat and trim With an orchard blooming near; But to-day the whole place seemed to him As if filled with drastic fear,

With a fear no more to take his place At the wheel of outbound ships, Or to know the breeze with stinging tang As toward the lea she dips.

When he dug the earth the clods were waves, In the sky, he saw a sail, And he thought the hoe that burned his hands Was a tiller through a gale.

In the early dawn he crept away, She was left in her spoolwood bed; And mile by mile, up hill, down dale, He ran where the pathways led.

He signed on at once for foreign ports, But had she agreed with fate . . . Then the sea that now between them rolls Would not be unmeasured hate.