| |
| YEARS, years ago, ere yet my dreams | |
| Had been of being wise or witty, | |
| Ere I had done with writing themes, | |
| Or yawned o’er this infernal Chitty,— | |
| Years, years ago, while all my joys | 5 |
| Were in my fowling-piece and filly; | |
| In short, while I was yet a boy, | |
| I fell in love with Laura Lilly. | |
| |
| 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 sets young hearts romancing: | |
| She was our queen, our rose, our star; | 15 |
| And then she danced,—O Heaven! her dancing. | |
| |
| 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 wondered where she ’d left her sparrows. | |
| |
| She talked 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 candle-light, at twelve o’clock,— | |
| To me it mattered not a tittle,— | 30 |
| If those bright lips had quoted Locke, | |
| I might have thought they murmured 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 laughed; I soon found out | |
| That ancient ladies have no feeling: | |
| My father frowned; but how should gout | |
| See any happiness in kneeling? | 40 |
| |
| 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, | |
| O, what are they to love’s sensations? | |
| Black eyes, fair forehead, clustering locks,— | |
| Such wealth, such honors Cupid chooses; | |
| He cares as little for the stocks | 55 |
| As Baron Rothschild for the muses. | |
| |
| 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 Catilina jealous: | |
| She touched the organ; I could stand | |
| For hours and hours to blow the bellows. | |
| |
| 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 Leeboo, | |
| 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 |
| |
| 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 O, | |
| How sweetly all her notes were folded! | |
| |
| Our love was most like other loves,— | |
| A little glow, a little shiver, | 90 |
| A rosebud 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. | |
| |
| We parted: months and years 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! | |
| |
