Gave signal sweet, in that old hall, Of hands across and down the middle, Hers was the subtlest spell by far Of all that set young hearts romancing; She was our queen, our rose, our star; And then she danced-O Heaven, her danc ing! Dark was her hair, her hand was white; Her eyes were full of liquid light; Her every look, her every smile, Shot right and left a score of arrows; I thought 'twas Venus from her isle, And wondered where she'd left her sparrows. She talked,-of politics or prayers,— Or Southey's prose, or Wordsworth's son nets, Of danglers--or of dancing bears, Of battles-or the last new bonnets; By candlelight, at twelve o'clock, To me it mattered not a tittle; If those bright lips had quoted Locke, I might have thought they murmured Little. Through sunny May, through sultry June, I spoke her praises to the moon, I wrote them to the "Sunday Journal." She was the daughter of a Dean- Had fed the parish with her bounty; And Lord-Lieutenant of the county. But titles, and the three per cents, As Baron Rothschild for the Muses. She sketched; the vale, the wood, the beach, Young blossom in her boudoir fading: She touched the organ; I could stand For hours and hours to blow the bellows. She kept an album, too, at home, Well filled with all an album's glories: Paintings of butterflies, and Rome, Patterns for trimmings, Persian stories; Soft songs to Julia's cockatoo, Fierce odes to Famine and to Slaughter, And she was flattered, worshiped, bored; Her sayings were extremely quoted. She smiled on many, just for fun— Her heart had thought of for a minute.— In phrase which was divinely molded; She wrote a charming hand-and oh! How sweetly all her notes were folded! Our love was like most other loves- And "Fly not yet "-upon the river; Some hopes of dying broken-hearted, A miniature, a lock of hair, The usual vows-and then we parted. We parted; months and years rolled by; Our meeting was all mirth and laughter: |