| |
| DEAR DOLLY! who does not recall | |
| The thrilling page that pictured all | |
| Those charms that held our sense in thrall, | |
| Just as the artist caught her— | |
| As down that English lane she tripped, | 5 |
| In bowered chintz, hat sideways tipped, | |
| Trim-bodiced, bright-eyed, roguish-lipped, | |
| The locksmith’s pretty daughter. | |
| |
| Sweet fragment of the Master’s art! | |
| O simple faith! O rustic heart! | 10 |
| O maid that hath no counterpart | |
| In life’s dry, dog-eared pages! | |
| Where shall we find thy like? Ah, stay! | |
| Methinks I saw her yesterday | |
| In chintz that flowered, as one might say, | 15 |
| Perennial for ages. | |
| |
| Her father’s modest cot was stone, | |
| Five stories high; in style and tone | |
| Composite, and, I frankly own, | |
| Within its walls revealing | 20 |
| Some certain novel, strange ideas; | |
| A Gothic door with Roman piers, | |
| And floors removed some thousand years | |
| From their Pompeiian ceiling. | |
| |
| The small salon where she received | 25 |
| Was Louis Quatorze, and relieved | |
| By Chinese cabinets, conceived | |
| Grotesquely by the heathen; | |
| The sofas were a classic sight— | |
| The Roman bench (sedilia hight); | 30 |
| The chairs were French in gold and white, | |
| And one Elizabethan. | |
| |
| And she, the goddess of that shrine, | |
| Two ringed fingers placed in mine— | |
| The stones were many carats fine, | 35 |
| And of the purest water— | |
| Then dropped a curtsey, far enough | |
| To fairly fill her cretonne puff | |
| And show the petticoat’s rich stuff | |
| That her fond parent bought her. | 40 |
| |
| Her speech was simple as her dress— | |
| Not French the more, but English less, | |
| She loved; yet sometimes, I confess, | |
| I scarce could comprehend her. | |
| Her manners were quite far from shy: | 45 |
| There was a quiet in her eye | |
| Appalling to the Hugh who’d try | |
| With rudeness to offend her. | |
| |
| “But whence,” I cried, “this masquerade? | |
| Some figure for this night’s charade— | 50 |
| A Watteau shepherdess or maid?” | |
| She smiled and begged my pardon: | |
| Why surely you must know the name— | |
| That woman who was Shakespeare’s flame | |
| Or Byron’s—well, it’s all the same: | 55 |
| Why, Lord! I’m Dolly Varden!” | |
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