WEBVTT

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My three-year-old son's
current favorite poem,

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which is very different.

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He loves the moon.

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This is a poem
called "Moon Folly."

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It was written in 1913 by
an American woman poet--

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Fanny Stearns Davis, who's
not very well known now.

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But I found this poem in a
book that an 80-year-old friend

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of mine gave to us
when I had my son,

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and it was her first beloved
book of poems and is now

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my son's.

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"I will go up the
mountain after the moon.

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She is caught in
a dead fir tree.

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Like a great pale apple
of silver and pearl,

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like a great pale apple is she.

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I will leave and will catch
her with quick, cold hands,

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and carry her home in my sack.

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And set her down safe
on the oaken bench

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to stand by the chimney-back.

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And, then, I will sit
by the fire all night.

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I will sit by the fire all day.

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And I will gnaw at the
moon to my heart's delight

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till I gnaw her slowly away.

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And while I grow mad with
the moon's cold taste,

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the world will beat at my door,
crying, 'come out,' and crying,

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'make haste, and give
us the moon once more.'

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But I shall not answer
them ever at all.

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I shall laugh as
I count and hide

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the great black beautiful
seeds of the moon in a flower

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pot deep and wide.

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Then I shall lie down
and go fast asleep,

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drunken with flame and swoon.

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But the seeds will sprout,
and the seed will leap--

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the subtle swift
seeds of the moon.

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And some day, all of the world
that cries and beats at my door

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shall see, 1,000
moon-leaves spring

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from my thatch on a
wonderful white moon-tree.

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Then each shall have moons
to his heart's desire--

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apples of silver
and pearl, apples

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of orange and copper fire
setting his five wits aswirl.

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And then they will thank
me who mock me now--

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'oh, wanting the moon is he.'

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Though I'm off to the
mountain after the moon ere

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she falls from the
dead fir tree."

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[APPLAUSE]

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