| |
| HER eyes are sunlit hazel: | |
| Soft shadows round them play. | |
| Her dark hair, smoothly ordered, | |
| Is faintly touched with grey. | |
| Full of a gentle brightness | 5 |
| Her look and language are:— | |
| Kind tongue that never wounded, | |
| Sweet mirth that leaves no scar. | |
| |
| Her dresses are soft lilac | |
| And silver-pearly grey. | 10 |
| She wears, on meet occasion, | |
| Modes of a bygone day, | |
| Yet moves with bright composure | |
| In fashion’s pageant set, | |
| Until her world she teaches | 15 |
| Its costume to forget. | |
| |
| With score of friends foregathered | |
| Before a cheerful blaze, | |
| She loves good ranging converse | |
| Of past and future days. | 20 |
| Her best delight (too seldom) | |
| From olden friends to hear | |
| How fares the small old city | |
| She left this many a year. | |
| |
| (There is a still more pleasant, | 25 |
| A cosier converse still, | |
| When, all the guests departed, | |
| Close comrades talk their fill. | |
| Beside our smouldering fire | |
| We muse and wonder late; | 30 |
| Commingling household gossip | |
| With talk of gods and fate.) | |
| |
| All seemly ways of living,— | |
| Proportion, comeliness, | |
| Authority and order,— | 35 |
| Her loyal heart possess. | |
| Then with what happy fingers | |
| She spreads the linen fair | |
| In that great Church of Bishops | |
| That is her darling care! | 40 |
| |
| And yet I dare to forecast | |
| What her new name must be | |
| Writ in the mystic volume | |
| Beside the crystal sea:— | |
| Instead of “True Believer,” | 45 |
| The golden quill hath penned, | |
| “Of the poor beasts that perish, | |
The brave and gentle friend.”
Scribner’s Magazine | |
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