Fly Leaves | Page 9

confident they err'd;
Are you?
UNDER THE TREES.
"Under the trees!" Who but agrees?That there is magic in words such as these??Promptly one sees shake in the breeze?Stately lime-avenues haunted of bees:?Where, looking far over buttercupp'd leas,?Lads and "fair shes" (that is Byron, and he's?An authority) lie very much at their ease;?Taking their teas, or their duck and green peas,?Or, if they prefer it, their plain bread and cheese:?Not objecting at all though it's rather a squeeze?And the glass is, I daresay, at 80 degrees.?Some get up glees, and are mad about Ries?And Sainton, and Tamberlik's thrilling high Cs;?Or if painters, hold forth upon Hunt and Maclise,?And the tone and the breadth of that landscape of Lee's;?Or if learned, on nodes and the moon's apogees,?Or, if serious, on something of AKHB's,?Or the latest attempt to convert the Chaldees;?Or in short about all things, from earthquakes to fleas.?Some sit in twos or (less frequently) threes,?With their innocent lambswool or book on their knees,?And talk, and enact, any nonsense you please,?As they gaze into eyes that are blue as the seas;?And you hear an occasional "Harry, don't tease"?From the sweetest of lips in the softest of keys,?And other remarks, which to me are Chinese.?And fast the time flees; till a ladylike sneeze,?Or a portly papa's more elaborate wheeze,?Makes Miss Tabitha seize on her brown muffatees,?And announce as a fact that it's going to freeze,?And that young people ought to attend to their Ps?And their Qs, and not court every form of disease:?Then Tommy eats up the three last ratafias,?And pretty Louise wraps her robe de cerise?Round a bosom as tender as Widow Machree's,?And (in spite of the pleas of her lorn vis-a-vis)?Goes to wrap up her uncle--a patient of Skey's,?Who is prone to catch chills, like all old Bengalese:-?But at bedtime I trust he'll remember to grease?The bridge of his nose, and preserve his rupees?From the premature clutch of his fond legatees;?Or at least have no fees to pay any M. D.s?For the cold his niece caught, sitting under the Trees.
MOTHERHOOD.
She laid it where the sunbeams fall?Unscann'd upon the broken wall.?Without a tear, without a groan,?She laid it near a mighty stone,?Which some rude swain had haply cast?Thither in sport, long ages past,?And Time with mosses had o'erlaid,?And fenced with many a tall grassblade,?And all about bid roses bloom?And violets shed their soft perfume.?There, in its cool and quiet bed,?She set her burden down and fled:?Nor flung, all eager to escape,?One glance upon the perfect shape?That lay, still warm and fresh and fair,?But motionless and soundless there.
No human eye had mark'd her pass?Across the linden-shadow'd grass?Ere yet the minster clock chimed seven:?Only the innocent birds of heaven -?The magpie, and the rook whose nest?Swings as the elmtree waves his crest -?And the lithe cricket, and the hoar?And huge-limb'd hound that guards the door,?Look'd on when, as a summer wind?That, passing, leaves no trace behind,?All unapparell'd, barefoot all,?She ran to that old ruin'd wall,?To leave upon the chill dank earth?(For ah! she never knew its worth)?'Mid hemlock rank, and fern, and ling,?And dews of night, that precious thing!
And there it might have lain forlorn?From morn till eve, from eve to morn:?But that, by some wild impulse led,?The mother, ere she turn'd and fled,?One moment stood erect and high;?Then pour'd into the silent sky?A cry so jubilant, so strange,?That Alice--as she strove to range?Her rebel ringlets at her glass -?Sprang up and gazed across the grass;?Shook back those curls so fair to see,?Clapp'd her soft hands in childish glee;?And shriek'd--her sweet face all aglow,
Her very limbs with rapture shaking -?"My hen has laid an egg, I know;
"And only hear the noise she's making!"
MYSTERY.
I know not if in others' eyes
She seem'd almost divine;?But far beyond a doubt it lies
That she did not in mine.
Each common stone on which she trod
I did not deem a pearl:?Nay it is not a little odd
How I abhorr'd that girl.
We met at balls and picnics oft,
Or on a drawingroom stair;?My aunt invariably cough'd
To warn me she was there:
At croquet I was bid remark
How queenly was her pose,?As with stern glee she drew the dark
Blue ball beneath her toes,
And made the Red fly many a foot:
Then calmly she would stoop,?Smiling an angel smile, to put
A partner through his hoop.
At archery I was made observe
That others aim'd more near.?But none so tenderly could curve
The elbow round the ear:
Or if we rode, perhaps she DID
Pull sharply at the curb;?But then the way in which she slid
From horseback was superb!
She'd throw off odes, again, whose flow
And fire were more than Sapphic;?Her voice was sweet, and very low;
Her singing quite seraphic:
She WAS a seraph, lacking wings.
That much I freely own.?But, it is one of those queer things
Whose cause is all unknown -
(Such are the wasp, the household fly,
The shapes that crawl and curl?By men called centipedes)--that I
Simply abhorred