Edmund Clarence Stedman

The Doorstep

The conference-meeting through at last,
⁠We boys around the vestry waited
To see the girls come tripping past
⁠Like snow-birds willing to be mated.

Not braver he that leaps the wall
⁠By level-musket flashes litten,
Than I, that stepped before them all
⁠Who longed to see me get the mitten.

But no, she blushed and took my arm!
⁠We let the old folks have the highway,
And started toward the Maple Farm
⁠Along a kind of lovers' by-way.

I can't remember what we said,
⁠'T was nothing worth a song or story;
Yet that rude path by which we sped
⁠Seemed all transformed and in a glory.

The snow was crisp beneath our feet,
⁠The moon was full, the fields were gleaming;
By hood and tippet sheltered sweet,
⁠Her face with youth and health was beaming.

The little hand outside her muff,—
⁠O sculptor, if you could but mould it!—
So lightly touched my jacket-cuff,
⁠To keep it warm I had to hold it.

To have her with me there alone,—
⁠'T was love and fear and triumph blended.
At last we reached the foot-worn stone
⁠Where that delicious journey ended.

The old folks, too, were almost home;
⁠Her dimpled hand the latches fingered,
We heard the voices nearer come,
⁠Yet on the doorstep still we lingered.

She shook her ringlets from her hood
⁠And with a "Thank you, Ned," dissembled,
But yet I knew she understood
⁠With what a daring wish I trembled.

A cloud passed kindly overhead,
⁠The moon was slyly peeping through it,
Yet hid its face, as if it said,
⁠"Come, now or never! do it! do it!"

My lips till then had only known
⁠The kiss of mother and of sister,
But somehow, full upon her own
⁠Sweet, rosy, darling mouth,—I kissed her!

Perhaps 't was boyish love, yet still,
⁠O listless woman, weary lover!
To feel once more that fresh, wild thrill
⁠I'd give—but who can live youth over.