The Patchwork Bonnet

Across the room my silent love I throw,         Where you sit sewing in bed by candlelight,             Your young stern profile and industrious fingers     Displayed against the blind in a shadow-show,         To Dinda's grave delight.     The needle dips and pokes, the cheerful thread         Runs after, follow-my-leader down the seam:             The patchwork pieces cry for joy together,     O soon to sit as a crown on Dinda's head,         Fulfilment of their dream.     Snippets and odd ends folded by, forgotten,         With camphor on a top shelf, hard to find,             Now wake to this most happy resurrection,     To Dinda playing toss with a reel of cotton         And staring at the blind.     Dinda in sing-song stretching out one hand         Calls for the playthings; mother does not hear:             Her mind sails far away on a patchwork Ocean,     And all the world must wait till she touches land;         So Dinda cries in fear,     Then Mother turns, laughing like a young fairy,         And Dinda smiles to see her look so kind,             Calls out again for playthings, playthings, playthings;     And now the shadows make an Umbrian Mary         Adoring, on the blind.