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Home  »  The New Poetry  »  A Lady

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

A Lady

By Amy Lowell

YOU are beautiful and faded,

Like an old opera tune

Played upon a harpsichord;

Or like the sun-flooded silks

Of an eighteenth century boudoir.

In your eyes

Smoulder the fallen roses of outlived minutes,

And the perfume of your soul

Is vague and suffusing,

With the pungence of sealed spice jars.

Your half-tones delight me,

And I grow mad with gazing

At your blent colors.

My vigor is a new-minted penny,

Which I cast at your feet.

Gather it up from the dust,

That its sparkle may amuse you.