From “Puella Mea” [Through the young and awkward hours]
Through the young and awkward hours
my lady perfectly moving,
through the new world scarce astir
my fragile lady wandering
in whose perishable poise
is the mystery of Spring
(with her beauty more than snow
dexterous and fugitive
my very frail lady drifting
distinctly, moving like a myth
in the uncertain morning, with
April feet like sudden flowers
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on January 10, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
[Through the young and awkward hours] is a brief section of E. E. Cummings’s longest poem, Puella Mea (The Golden Eagle Press, 1923), inspired by his affair with Elaine Thayer, the wife of his friend and publisher, Scofield Thayer. In correspondence sent to the latter Thayer, Cummings wrote, “i have been like Hel working, like sissyphus of stone fame, upon the greatest Chanson d’Amour of the Centuries. it is called PUELLA MEA.” About the poem, biographer and poet Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno writes in his book, E. E. Cummings: A Biography (Sourcebooks, 2004), “Unabashed, excessive, exuberant, tender, and florid, the irregularly rhymed poem celebrates his ‘darling girl’ or ‘puella mea’ in both a conventional and unconventional manner.” He continues, “[T]he form and formula of ‘Puella Mea’ are frequently overwhelmed by lush, fresh images unique to Cummings.”
E. E. Cummings
Edward Estlin Cummings is known for his radical experimentation with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax; he abandoned traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression.