Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Hamilton Fish Armstrong, ed. The Book of New York Verse. 1917.

An Ivory Miniature

Helen Gray Cone

WHEN State Street homes were stately still,

When out of town was Murray Hill,

In late deceased “old times”

Of vast, embowering bonnet shapes

And creamy-crinkled Canton crapes

And florid annual-rhymes,

He owned a small suburban seat

Where now you see a modern street,

A monochrome of brown:

The sad “brown brown” of Dante’s dreams,

A twilight turned to stone that seems

To weight our city down.

Through leafy chestnuts whitely showed

The pillared front of his abode:

A garden girt it ’round,

Where pungent box did trim enclose

The marigold and cabbage rose,

And “pi’ny” heavy-crowned.

Yea, whatso sweets the changing years,

He most affected. Gone! but here’s

His face who loved them so

Old eyes like sherry, warm and mild;

A clear-hued cheek as cheek of child;

Sleek head, a sphere of snow.

His mouth was pious, and his nose

Patrician; with which mould there goes

A disaffected view.

In those sublime, be-oratored,

Spread-eagle days, his soul deplored

So much red-white-and-blue!

In umber ink, with S’s long,

He left behind him censure strong,

In stiffest phrases clothed!

But time—a pleasant jest enough!—

Has turned the tory leaves to buff,

The liberal hue he loathed!

Of many a gentle deed he made

Brief simple record. Never fade

Those everlasting flowers

That spring up wild in good men’s walks;

Opinions wither on their stalks,

And sere grow Fashion’s bowers.

Erect, befrilled, in neckcloth tall,

His semblance sits, removed from all

Our needs and noises new;

Released from all the rent we pay

As tenants of the large To-day,

Cool, in a background blue.

And he beneath a cherub chipped

Plump, squamous-pinioned, pouting-lipped,

Sleeps calm where Trinity

Points fingers dark to clouds that fleet;

A warning, seen from surging street,

A welcome seen from sea.

There fall, ghost glorified of tears

Shed for the dead in buried years,

The silver notes of chimes;

And there, with not unreverent hand

Though light, I lay this “greene garland,”

This woven wreath of rhymes.