Virtue Study: Pastoral.(Poem) From: Harvard Review | Date: June 1, 2005| Author: McPherson, Sandra | COPYRIGHT 2005 Harvard Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

 
The famous prose writer, 
with his morel woods and bass pond 
 
and charming one-room schoolhouse, 
grabbed his horse syringe 
 
and led the poet's girl away to the barn. 
They small-talked of her medical bent--she adored 
 
syringes. (Her mother'd seen her 
watch with elation 
 
in the children's clinic, each inoculation 
in her own upper arm.) 
 
And under the gaze 
of big horse eyes against the hay, 
 
spectators as grand as red oaks 
that pull down lightning, 
 
she listened as he i...