Point Lace and Diamonds | Page 3

not that fragmentary bit?Of my young verse a perfect prism,?Where worldly knowledge, pleasant wit,?True humor, kindly cynicism,?Refracted by the frolic glass?Of Fancy, play with change incessant??JUNE, 1874.
Great C?sar! What a sweet young ass?I must have been, when adolescent!?AUGUST, 1886.
A ROSEBUD IN LENT.
You saw her last, the ball-room's belle,?A _souffl��_, lace and roses blent;?Your worldly worship moved her then;?She does not know you now, in Lent.
See her at prayer! Her pleading hands?Bear not one gem of all her store.?Her face is saint-like. Be rebuked?By those pure eyes, and gaze no more
Turn, turn away! But carry hence?The lesson she has dumbly taught--?That bright young creature kneeling there?With every feeling, every thought
Absorbed in high and holy dreams?Of--new Spring dresses truth to say,?To them the time is sanctified?From Shrove-tide until Easter day.
A REFORMER.
You call me trifler, fain��ant,?And bid me give my life an aim!--?You're most unjust, dear. Hear me out,?And own your hastiness to blame.?I live with but a single thought;?My inmost heart and soul are set?On one sole task--a mighty one--?To simplify our alphabet.
Five vowel sounds we use in speech;?They're A, and E, I, O, and U:?I mean to cut them down to four.?You "wonder what good that will do."?Why, this cold earth will bloom again,?Eden itself be half re-won,?When breaks the dawn of my success?And U and I at last are one.
IN THE RECORD ROOM, SURROGATE'S OFFICE.
A tomb where legal ghouls grow fat;?Where buried papers, fold on fold,?Crumble to dust, that 'thwart the sun?Floats dim, a pallid ghost of gold.?The day is dying. All about,?Dark, threat'ning shadows lurk; but still?I ponder o'er a dead girl's name?Fast fading from a dead man's will.
Katrina Harland, fair and sweet,?Sole heiress of your father's land,?Full many a gallant wooer rode?To snare your heart, to win your hand.?And one, perchance--who loved you best,?Feared men might sneer--"he sought her gold"--?And never spoke, but turned away?Stubborn and proud, to call you cold.
Cold? Would I knew! Perhaps you loved,?And mourned him all a virgin life.?Perhaps forgot his very name?As happy mother, happy wife.?Unanswered, sad, I turn away--?"You loved her_ first, then?" _First--well--no--?You little goose, the Harland will?Was proved full sixty years ago.
But Katrine's lands to-day are known?To lawyers as the Glass House tract;?Who were her heirs, no record shows;?The title's bad, in point of fact,?If she left children, at her death,?I've been retained to clear the title;?And all the questions, raised above,?Are, you'll perceive, extremely vital.
DE LUNATICO.
The squadrons of the sun still hold?The western hills, their armor glances,?Their crimson banners wide unfold,?Low-levelled lie their golden lances.?The shadows lurk along the shore,?Where, as our row-boat lightly passes,?The ripples startled by our oar,?Hide murmuring 'neath the hanging grasses.
Your eyes are downcast, for the light?Is lingering on your lids--forgetting?How late it is--for one last sight?Of you the sun delays his setting.?One hand droops idly from the boat,?And round the white and swaying fingers,?Like half-blown lilies gone afloat,?The amorous water, toying, lingers.
I see you smile behind your book,?Your gentle eyes concealing, under?Their drooping lids a laughing look?That's partly fun, and partly wonder?That I, a man of presence grave,?Who fight for bread 'neath Themis' banner?Should all at once begin to rave?In this--I trust--Aldrichian manner.
They say our lake is--sad, but true--?The mill-pond of a Yankee village,?Its swelling shores devoted to?The various forms of kitchen tillage;?That you're no more a maiden fair,?And I no lover, young and glowing;?Just an old, sober, married pair,?Who, after tea, have gone out rowing
Ah, dear, when memories, old and sweet,?Have fooled my reason thus, believe me,?Your eyes can only help the cheat,?Your smile more thoroughly deceive me.?I think it well that men, dear wife,?Are sometimes with such madness smitten,?Else little joy would be in life,?And little poetry be written.
PRO PATRIA ET GLORIA.
The lights blaze high in our brilliant rooms;?Fair are the maidens who throng our halls;?Soft, through the warm and perfumed air,?The languid music swells and falls.?The "Seventh" dances and flirts to-night--?All we are fit for, so they say,?We fops and weaklings, who masquerade?As soldiers, sometimes, in black and gray.
We can manage to make a street parade,?But, in a fight, we'd be sure to run.?Defend you! pshaw, the thought's absurd!?How about April, sixty-one??What was it made your dull blood thrill??Why did you cheer, and weep, and pray??Why did each pulse of your hearts mark time?To the tramp of the boys in black and gray?
You've not forgotten the nation's call?When down in the South the war-cloud burst;?"Troops for the front!" Do you ever think?Who answered, and marched, and got there first??Whose bayonets first scared Maryland??Whose were the colors that showed the way??Who set the step for the marching North??Some holiday soldiers in black and gray.
"Pretty boys in their pretty suits!"?"Too pretty by far to take under fire!"?A pretty boy in a pretty suit?Lay once in Bethel's bloody mire.?The first to fall in the war's first fight--?Raise him tenderly. Wash away?The blood and mire