Companions

1737

I cannot recall her figure:

Was it regal as Juno's own?

Or only a trifle bigger

Than the elves who surround the throne. Of the Fairy Queen, and are seen, I ween, By mortals in dreams alone?

What her eyes were like I know not:
Perhaps they were blurred with tears;
And perhaps in yon skies there glow not
(On the contrary) clearer spheres.
No! as to her eyes I am just as wise
As you or the cat, my dears.

Her teeth, I presume, were "pearly":

I

But which was she, brunette or blonde?

Her hair, was it quaintly curly,

Or as straight as a beadle's wand?

That I failed to remark: it was rather dark
And shadowy round the pond.

Then the hand that reposed so snugly

In mine, was it plump or spare?

Was the countenance fair or ugly?

Nay, children, you have me there!

I

My eyes were p'haps blurred; and besides I'd heard
That it's horribly rude to stare.

And I, was I brusque and surly?
Or oppressively bland and fond?
Was I partial to rising early?

Or why did we twain abscond,
When nobody knew, from the public view
To prowl by a misty pond?

What passed, what was felt or spoken,

Whether anything passed at all,-

And whether the heart was broken

That beat under that sheltering shawl,— (If shawl she had on, which I doubt),—has gone, Yes, gone from me past recall.

Was I haply the lady's suitor?
Or her uncle? I can't make out;
Ask your governess, dears, or tutor.
For myself, I'm in hopeless doubt

As to why we were there, who on earth we were,
And what this is all about.

Charles Stuart Calverley [1831-1884]

DOROTHY Q

A FAMILY PORTRAIT

GRANDMOTHER'S mother: her age,

I guess,

Thirteen summers, or something less;

Girlish bust, but womanly air;

Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair;
Lips that lover has never kissed;
Taper fingers and slender wrist;
Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade;
So they painted the little maid.

On her hand a parrot green
Sits unmoving and broods serene.
Hold up the canvas full in view,-

Look! there's a rent the light shines through

Dark with a century's fringe of dust,→

That was a Red-Coat's rapier-thrust!

Such is the tale the lady old,

Dorothy's daughter's daughter, told.

Who the painter was none may tell,→
One whose best was not over well;
Hard and dry, it must be confessed,
Flat as a rose that has long been pressed;
Yet in her cheek the hues are bright,

Dainty colors of red and white,
And in her slender shape are seen
Hint and promise of stately mien.

Look not on her with eyes of scorn,—
Dorothy Q. was a lady born!

Dorothy Q

Ay! since the galloping Normans came,
England's annals have known her name;
And still to the three-hilled rebel town
Dear is that ancient name's renown,
For many a civic wreath they won,
The youthful sire and the gray-haired son.

O Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.!
Strange is the gift that I owe to you;
Such a gift as never a king

Save to daughter or son might bring,-
All my tenure of heart and hand,

All my title to house and land;

Mother and sister and child and wife
And joy and sorrow and death and life!

What if a hundred years ago

Those close-shut lips had answered No,
When forth the tremulous question came
That cost the maiden her Norman name,
And under the folds that look so still
The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill?
Should I be I, or would it be

One tenth another, to nine tenths me?

Soft is the breath of a maiden's YES:

Not the light gossamer stirs with less;
But never a cable that holds so fast
Through all the battles of wave and blast,
And never an echo of speech or song

That lives in the babbling air so long!

1739.

There were tones in the voice that whispered then
You may hear to-day in a hundred men.

O lady and lover, how faint and far
Your images hover,--and here we are
Solid and stirring in flesh and bone,-
Edward's and Dorothy's-all their own,-
A goodly record for Time to show
Of a syllable spoken so long ago!—

Shall I bless you, Dorothy, or forgive
For the tender whisper that bade me live?

It shall be a blessing, my little maid!

I will heal the stab of the Red-Coat's blade,
And freshen the gold of the tarnished frame,
And gild with a rhyme your household name;
So you shall smile on us brave and bright
As first you greeted the morning's light,
And live untroubled by woes and fears
Through a second youth of a hundred years.
Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-1894]

MY AUNT

My aunt! my dear unmarried aunt!
Long years have o'er her flown;
Yet still she strains the aching clasp
That binds her virgin zone;

I know it hurts her, though she looks
As cheerful as she can;

Her waist is ampler than her life,

For life is but a span.

My aunt! my poor deluded aunt!
Her hair is almost gray;

Why will she train that winter curl
In such a spring-like way?
How can she lay her glasses down,

And say she reads as well,

When, through a double convex lens,

She just makes out to spell?

Her father, grandpapa! forgive

This erring lip its smiles,

Vowed she should make the finest girl

Within a hundred miles;

He sent her to a stylish school;

'Twas in her thirteenth June;

And with her, as the rules required,
"Two towels and a spoon."

The Last Leaf

They braced my aunt against a board,

To make her straight and tall;

They laced her up, they starved her down,
To make her light and small;

They pinched her feet, they singed her hair,
They screwed it up with pins;-

Oh, never mortal suffered more
In penance for her sins.

So, when my precious aunt was done,
My grandsire brought her back;
(By daylight, lest some rabid youth
Might follow on the track;)
"Ah!" said my grandsire, as he shook
Some powder in his pan,

"What could this lovely creature do
Against a desperate man!"

Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche,

Nor bandit cavalcade,

Tore from the trembling father's arms

His all-accomplished maid.

For her how happy had it been!
And Heaven had spared to me

To see one sad, ungathered rose
On my ancestral tree.

1741

Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-1894]

THE LAST LEAF

I SAW him once before,

As he passed by the door,

And again

The pavement stones resound,

As he totters o'er the ground

With his cane.

They say that in his prime,

Ere the pruning-knife of Time