| SHORT and sweet, and we 've come to the end of it— | |
| Our poor little love lying cold. | |
| Shall no sonnet, then, ever be penned of it? | |
| Nor the joys and pains of it told? | |
| How fair was its face in the morning, | 5 |
| How close its caresses at noon, | |
| How its evening grew chill without warning, | |
| Unpleasantly soon! | |
| |
| I can't say just how we began it— | |
| In a blush, or a smile, or a sigh; | 10 |
| Fate took but an instant to plan it; | |
| It needs but a moment to die. | |
| Yet—remember that first conversation, | |
| When the flowers you had dropped at your feet | |
| I restored. The familiar quotation | 15 |
| Was—"Sweets to the sweet." | |
| |
| Oh, their delicate perfume has haunted | |
| My senses a whole season through. | |
| If there was one soft charm that you wanted | |
| The violets lent it to you. | 20 |
| I whispered you, life was but lonely: | |
| A cue which you graciously took; | |
| And your eyes learned a look for me only— | |
| A very nice look. | |
| |
| And sometimes your hand would touch my hand, | 25 |
| With a sweetly particular touch; | |
| You said many things in a sigh, and | |
| Made a look express wondrously much. | |
| We smiled for the mere sake of smiling, | |
| And laughed for no reason but fun; | 30 |
| Irrational joys; but beguiling— | |
| And all that is done! | |
| |
| We were idle, and played for a moment | |
| At a game that now neither will press: | |
| I cared not to find out what "No" meant; | 35 |
| Nor your lips to grow yielding with "Yes." | |
| Love is done with and dead; if there lingers | |
| A faint and indefinite ghost, | |
| It is laid with this kiss on your fingers— | |
| A jest at the most. | 40 |
| |
| 'T is a commonplace, stale situation, | |
| Now the curtain comes down from above | |
| On the end of our little flirtation— | |
| A travesty romance; for Love, | |
| If he climbed in disguise to your lattice, | 45 |
| Fell dead of the first kisses' pain: | |
| But one thing is left us now; that is— | |
| Begin it again. | |
