Last night the gypsies came -
Nobody knows from where.
Where they’ve gone to nobody knows,
And nobody seems to care!
Between the trees on the old swamp road
I saw them round their fire:
Tattered children and dogs that barked
As the flames leaped high and higher;
There were black-eyed girls in scarlet shawls,
Old folk wrinkled with years,
Men with handkerchiefs round their throats
And silver loops in their ears.
Ragged and red like maple leaves
When frost comes in the Fall,
The gypsies stayed but a single night;
In the morning gone were all -
Never a shaggy gypsy dog,
Never a gypsy child;
Only a burnt-out gypsy fire
Where danced that band so wild.
All gone and away,
Who knows where?
Only the wind that sweeps
Maple branches bare.
Rachel Lyman Field (September 19, 1894 New York City – March 15, 1942 Los Angeles, California) 美国诗人、小说家和儿童文学作家。
She won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award twice, in 1958 for Prayer for a Child and in 1961 for Hitty, Her First Hundred Years..