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| THINE old-world eyes—each one a violet | |
| Big as the baby rose that is thy mouth— | |
| Set me a-dreaming. Have our eyes not met | |
| In childhood—in a garden of the South? | |
| |
| Thy lips are trembling with a song of France, | 5 |
| My cousin, and thine eyes are dimly sweet; | |
| ’Wildered with reading in an old romance | |
| All afternoon upon the garden seat. | |
| |
| The summer wind read with thee, and the bees | |
| That on the sunny pages loved to crawl; | 10 |
| A skipping reader was the impatient breeze, | |
| And turned the leaves, but the slow bees read all. | |
| |
| And now thy foot descends the terrace stair; | |
| I hear the rustle of thy silk attire; | |
| I breathe the musky odors of thy hair, | 15 |
| And airs that from thy painted fan respire. | |
| |
| Idly thou pausest in the shady walk, | |
| Thine ear attentive to the fountain’s fall; | |
| Thou mark’st the flower-de-luce sway on her stalk, | |
| The speckled vergalieus ripening on the wall. | 20 |
| |
| Thou hast the feature of my mother’s race, | |
| The gilded comb she wore, her smile, her eye; | |
| The blood that flushes softly in thy face | |
| Crawls through my veins beneath this northern sky. | |
| |
| As one disherited, though next of kin, | 25 |
| Who lingers at the barred ancestral gate, | |
| And sadly sees the happy heir within | |
| Stroll careless through his forfeited estate,— | |
| |
| Even so I watch thy southern eyes, Lisette, | |
| Lady of my lost paradise, and heir | 30 |
| Of summer days that were my birthright. Yet | |
| Beauty like thine makes usurpation fair. | |
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