Robert William Service (Роберт Уильям Сервис)
Little Moccasins
Come out, O Little Moccasins, and frolic on the snow! Come out, O tiny beaded feet, and twinkle in the light! I'll play the old Red River reel, you used to love it so: Awake, O Little Moccasins, and dance for me to-night! Your hair was all a gleamy gold, your eyes a corn-flower blue; Your cheeks were pink as tinted shells, you stepped light as a fawn; Your mouth was like a coral bud, with seed pearls peeping through; As gladdening as Spring you were, as radiant as dawn. Come out, O Little Moccasins! I'll play so soft and low, The songs you loved, the old heart-songs that in my mem'ry ring; O child, I want to hear you now beside the campfire glow! With all your heart a-throbbing in the simple words you sing. For there was only you and I, and you were all to me; And round us were the barren lands, but little did we fear; Of all God's happy, happy folks the happiest were we. . . . (Oh, call her, poor old fiddle mine, and maybe she will hear!) Your mother was a half-breed Cree, but you were white all through; And I, your father was -- but well, that's neither here nor there; I only know, my little Queen, that all my world was you, And now that world can end to-night, and I will never care. For there's a tiny wooden cross that pricks up through the snow: (Poor Little Moccasins! you're tired, and so you lie at rest.) And there's a grey-haired, weary man beside the campfire glow: (O fiddle mine! the tears to-night are drumming on your breast.)
Robert William Service’s other poems:
900
