Commencement

Hush! Move back
No, further yet. Stand so:
Concealed and still.
Hark! Here she comes!
Young, glorious, eager, jubilant.
She has flung wide the door to life,
And, poised upon its threshold,
Is intent on flight
To heights unknown, undreamed by us who love her!
(Does your heart hurt, too?)
Intense, exalted, unaware of us,
She stands enrapt, her noblest self
Held ready for the world.
(No, no! Keep back!) The tendrils of our love
Are brittle now. She breaks them,
All unknowing, as she goes,
Engrossed in new, out-groping tendrils of her own.
Now we must step aside, and be content
That every childhood need of hers
We met with loving care;
Our present duty only
That these memories of ours
Do not distract, do not dismay her now.

^__Caroline Cain Durkee

Contemporary Kansas Poetry
Helen Rhoda Hoopes
page 52
(Kansas City: Joseph D. Havens Company. 1927)