THEY declare that I'm gracefully pretty,
The very best waltzer that whirls;
They say I am sparkling and witty,
The pearl, the queen rose-bud of girls.
But, alas for the popular blindness!
Its judgment, though folly, can hurt:
Since my heart, that runs over with kindness,
It vows is the heart of a flirt!
How, how, can I help it, if Nature,
Whose mysteries baffle our ken,
Hath made me the tenderest creature
That ever had pity on men?
When the shafts of my luminous glances
Have tortured some sensitive breast,
Why, I soften their light till it trances
The poor wounded bosom to rest!
Can I help it if, brought from all regions,
As diverse in features as gait,
Rash lovers besiege me in legions,
Each lover demanding his fate?
To be cold to such fervors of feeling
Would pronounce me a dullard or dunce;
And so, the bare thought sets me reeling,
I'm engaged to six suitors at once!
The first,--we shall call him "sweet William,"
He's a lad scarcely witty or wise--
The gloom of the sorrows of "Ilium"
Would seem to outbreathe on his sighs.
When I strove, half in earnest, to flout him,
Pale, pale at my footstool he sunk;
But mamma, quite too ready to scout him,
Would hint that "sweet Willie" was drunk!
My second, a florid Adonis,
Of forty-and-five, to a day,
Drives me out in his phaeton with ponies,
Making love every yard of the way,
Who so pleasantly placed could resist him?
Had he popped 'neath the moonlight and dew
That eve, I could almost have kissed him
(A confession alone, dear, for you).
Next, a widower, polished and youthful,
Far famed for his learning and pelf:
Can I doubt that his passion is truthful,
That he seeks me alone for myself?
Yet I know that some slanderers mutter
His fortune is just taking wings;
But I scorn the backbiters who utter
Such basely censorious things!
Could they hearken his love-whisper, dulcet
As April's soft tide on the strand,
Whose white curves are loath to repulse it,
So sweet is its homage and bland;
Could they hear how his dead wife's devotion
He praises, while yearning for mine--
They would own that his ardent emotion
Is something--yes--almost divine!
My fourth--would to heaven I could paint him
As next the high altar he stands--
A Saint John, all the people besaint him?
Pale brow and immaculate hands,
Ah! his tones in their wooing seem holy,
Nor date I believe it misplaced,
When in arm of the church, stealing slowly.
Is folded, at length, round my waist;
Behold this long list of my lovers
With a soldier and sailor complete:
Both swear that their hearts were but rovers
Till fettered and bound at my feet.
Oh dear! but these worshippers daunt me:
Their claims, their vain wishes, appall;
'Tis sad how they harass and haunt me,
What, WHAT, shall I do with them all?
Later.
AS the foam-flakes, when steadfastly blowing,
The west wind sweeps reckless and free,
Are borne where the deep billows, flowing,
Pass out to a limitless sea,
So the gay spume of girlish romances,
Upcaught by true Love on his breath,
With the fretwork and foam of young fancies,
Was borne through vague distance to death.
For he came--the true hero--one morning,
And my soul with quick thrills of delight
Leaped upward, renewed, and reborn in
A world of strange beauty and might:
I seemed fenced from all earthly disaster;
My pulses beat tuneful and fast;
So I welcomed my monarch, my master
The first real love, and the last.
