Poems (Piatt)/Volume 2/The Little Cowherd
THE LITTLE COWHERD.
"Come, look at her and you will love her. Go, lead her now through pleasant places,And teach her that our New-World's clover Is sweet as Jersey Island daisies.
"Yes, you may do a little playing Close to the gate, my pretty warder;But, meanwhile, keep your cow from straying Across the elfin people's border."
So to the boy his mother jested About his light task, lightly heeding,While in the flowering grass he rested The magic book that he was reading.
At sundown for the cow's returning The milkmaid waited long, I'm thinking.Hours later, by the moon's weird burning, Did fairy-folk have cream for drinking?
. . . What of the boy? By hill and hollow, Through bloom and brier, till twilight ended,His book had charmed him on to follow The cow—the one that Cadmus tended!