O rising Sun, so fair and gay,
What are you bringing me, I pray,
Of sorrow or of joy to-day?

You look as if you meant to please,
Reclining in your gorgeous ease
Behind the bare-branched apple-trees.

The world is rich and bright, as though
The pillows where your head is low
Had lit the fields of driven snow.

The hoar-frost on the window turns
Into a wood of giant ferns
Where some great conflagration burns.

And all my children comes again
As lightsome and as free from stain
As those frost-pictures on the pane.

I would that I could mount on high
And meet you, Sun--that you and I
Had to ourselves the whole wide sky.

But here my poor soul has to stay,
So tell me, rising Sun, I pray,
What are you bringing me to-day?

What shall this busy brain have thought,
What shall these hands and feet have wrought,
What sorrows shall the hours have brought,

Before thy brilliant course is run,
Before this new-born day is done,
Before you set, O rising Sun?