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| YEARS—years ago—ere yet my dreams | |
| Had been of being wise or witty,— | |
| Ere I had done with writing themes, | |
| Or yawn’d o’er this infernal Chitty;— | |
| Years—years ago—while all my joy | 5 |
| Was in my fowling-piece and filly,— | |
| In short, while I was yet a boy, | |
| I fell in love with Laura Lily. | |
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| I saw her at the County Ball: | |
| There, when the sounds of flute and fiddle | 10 |
| 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; | 15 |
| And then she danced—O Heaven, her dancing. | |
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| Dark was her hair, her hand was white; | |
| Her voice was exquisitely tender; | |
| Her eyes were full of liquid light; | |
| I never saw a waist so slender! | 20 |
| Her every look, her every smile, | |
| Shot right and left a score of arrows; | |
| I thought ’t was Venus from her isle, | |
| And wonder’d where she’d left her sparrows. | |
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| She talk’d—of politics or prayers,— | 25 |
| Of Southey’s prose, or Wordsworth’s sonnets, | |
| Of danglers—or of dancing bears, | |
| Of battles—or the last new bonnets, | |
| By candlelight, at twelve o’clock, | |
| To me it matter’d not a tittle; | 30 |
| If those bright lips had quoted Locke, | |
| I might have thought they murmur’d Little. | |
| |
| Through sunny May, through sultry June, | |
| I loved her with a love eternal; | |
| I spoke her praises to the moon, | 35 |
| I wrote them to the Sunday Journal; | |
| My mother laugh’d; I soon found out | |
| That ancient ladies have no feeling; | |
| My father frown’d; but how should gout | |
| See any happiness in kneeling? | 40 |
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| She was the daughter of a Dean, | |
| Rich, fat, and rather apoplectic; | |
| She had one brother, just thirteen, | |
| Whose color was extremely hectic; | |
| Her grandmother for many a year | 45 |
| Had fed the parish with her bounty; | |
| Her second cousin was a peer, | |
| And Lord Lieutenant of the County. | |
| |
| But titles, and the three per cents, | |
| And mortgages, and great relations, | 50 |
| And India bonds, and tithes, and rents, | |
| Oh what are they to love’s sensations? | |
| Black eyes, fair forehead, clustering locks— | |
| Such wealth, such honours, Cupid chooses; | |
| He cares as little for the Stocks, | 55 |
| As Baron Rothschild for the Muses. | |
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| She sketched; the vale, the wood, the beach, | |
| Grew lovelier from her pencil’s shading: | |
| She botanized; I envied each | |
| Young blossom in her boudoir fading: | 60 |
| She warbled Handel; it was grand; | |
| She made the Catalani jealous: | |
| She touched the organ; I could stand | |
| For hours and hours to blow the bellows. | |
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| She kept an album, too, at home, | 65 |
| 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, | 70 |
| And autographs of Prince Leboo, | |
| And recipes for elder-water. | |
| |
| And she was flattered, worshipped, bored; | |
| Her steps were watched, her dress was noted; | |
| Her poodle dog was quite adored, | 75 |
| Her sayings were extremely quoted; | |
| She laughed, and every heart was glad, | |
| As if the taxes were abolished; | |
| She frowned, and every look was sad, | |
| As if the Opera were demolished. | 80 |
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| She smiled on many, just for fun,— | |
| I knew that there was nothing in it; | |
| I was the first—the only one | |
| Her heart had thought of for a minute.— | |
| I knew it, for she told me so, | 85 |
| In phrase which was divinely moulded; | |
| She wrote a charming hand,—and oh! | |
| How sweetly all her notes were folded! | |
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| Our love was like most other loves;— | |
| A little glow, a little shiver, | 90 |
| A rose-bud, and a pair of gloves, | |
| And ‘Fly not yet’—upon the river; | |
| Some jealousy of some one’s heir, | |
| Some hopes of dying broken-hearted, | |
| A miniature, a lock of hair, | 95 |
| The usual vows,—and then we parted. | |
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| We parted; months and months rolled by; | |
| We met again four summers after: | |
| Our parting was all sob and sigh; | |
| Our meeting was all mirth and laughter: | 100 |
| For in my heart’s most secret cell | |
| There had been many other lodgers; | |
| And she was not the ball-room’s Belle, | |
| But only—Mrs. Something Rogers! | |
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