Fly Leaves | Page 9

pointsmen spy
Some simple English phrase--"With care"
Or "This side
uppermost"--and cry
Like children? No? No more have I.
Yet deem
not him whose eyes are dry
A bear.
But ah! what treasure hides beneath
That lid so much the worse for wear?
A ring perhaps--a rosy wreath -

A photograph by Vernon Heath -
Some matron's temporary teeth
Or hair!
Perhaps some seaman, in Peru

Or Ind, hath stow'd herein a rare
Cargo of birds' eggs for his Sue;

With many a vow that he'll be true,
And many a hint that she is too,
Too fair.
Perhaps--but wherefore vainly pry
Into the page that's folded there?
I shall be better by and by:
The
porters, as I sit and sigh,
Pass and repass--I wonder why
They stare!
ON THE BRINK.
I watch'd her as she stoop'd to pluck
A wildflower in her hair to twine;
And wish'd that it had been my
luck
To call her mine.
Anon I heard her rate with mad
Mad words her babe within its cot;
And felt particularly glad
That it had not.
I knew (such subtle brains have men)
That she was uttering what she shouldn't;
And thought that I would
chide, and then
I thought I wouldn't:
Who could have gazed upon that face,
Those pouting coral lips, and chided?
A Rhadamanthus, in my place,

Had done as I did:
For ire wherewith our bosoms glow
Is chain'd there oft by Beauty's spell;
And, more than that, I did not
know
The widow well.
So the harsh phrase pass'd unreproved.
Still mute--(O brothers, was it sin?) -
I drank, unutterably moved,
Her beauty in:
And to myself I murmur'd low,
As on her upturn'd face and dress
The moonlight fell, "Would she say
No,
By chance, or Yes?"
She stood so calm, so like a ghost
Betwixt me and that magic moon,
That I already was almost
A finish'd coon.
But when she caught adroitly up
And soothed with smiles her little daughter;
And gave it, if I'm right,
a sup
Of barley-water;
And, crooning still the strange sweet lore
Which only mothers' tongues can utter,
Snow'd with deft hand the
sugar o'er

Its bread and butter;
And kiss'd it clingingly--(Ah, why
Don't women do these things in private?) -
I felt that if I lost her, I
Should not survive it:
And from my mouth the words nigh flew -
The past, the future, I forgat 'em:
"Oh! if you'd kiss me as you do
That thankless atom!"
But this thought came ere yet I spake,
And froze the sentence on my lips:
"They err, who marry wives that
make
Those little slips."
It came like some familiar rhyme,
Some copy to my boyhood set;
And that's perhaps the reason I'm
Unmarried yet.
Would she have own'd how pleased she was,
And told her love with widow's pride?
I never found out that, because
I never tried.
Be kind to babes and beasts and birds:
Hearts may be hard, though lips are coral;
And angry words are angry
words:
And that's the moral.

"FOREVER."
Forever; 'tis a single word!
Our rude forefathers deem'd it two:
Can you imagine so absurd
A view?
Forever! What abysms of woe
The word reveals, what frenzy, what
Despair! For ever (printed so)
Did not.
It looks, ah me! how trite and tame!
It fails to sadden or appal
Or solace--it is not the same
At all.
O thou to whom it first occurr'd
To solder the disjoin'd, and dower
Thy native language with a word
Of power:
We bless thee! Whether far or near
Thy dwelling, whether dark or fair
Thy kingly brow, is neither here
Nor there.
But in men's hearts shall be thy throne,
While the great pulse of England beats:
Thou coiner of a word
unknown
To Keats!

And nevermore must printer do
As men did long ago; but run
"For" into "ever," bidding two
Be one.
Forever! passion-fraught, it throws
O'er the dim page a gloom, a glamour:
It's sweet, it's strange; and I
suppose
It's grammar.
Forever! 'Tis a single word!
And yet our fathers deem'd it two:
Nor am I 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