The Girl of All Periods

Coventry Patmore (1823–1896)

“AND even our women,” lastly grumbles Ben,

“Leaving their nature, dress and talk like men!”

A damsel, as our train stops at Five Ashes,

Down to the station in a dog-cart dashes.

A footman buys her thicket, “Third class, parly;”

And, in the huge-buttoned coat and “Champagne Charley”

And such scant manhood else as use allows her,

Her two shy knees bound in a single trouser,

With, ’twixt her shapely lips, a violet

Perched as a proxy for a cigarette,

She takes her window in our smoking carriage,

And scans us, calmly scorning men and marriage.

Ben frowns in silence; older, I know better

Than to read ladies ’havior in the letter.

This aping man is crafty Love’s devising

To make the woman’s difference more surprising;

And, as for feeling wroth at such rebelling,

Who ’d scold the child for now and then repelling

Lures with “I won’t!” or for a moment’s straying

In its sure growth towards more full obeying?

“Yes, she had read the ‘Legend of the Ages,’

And George Sand too, skipping the wicked pages.”

And, whilst we talked, her protest firm and perky

Against mankind, I thought, grew lax and jerky;

And, at a compliment, her mouth’s compressure

Nipped, in its birth a little laugh of pleasure;

And smiles, forbidden her lips, as weakness horrid,

Broke, in grave lights, from eyes and chin and forehead;

And, as I pushed kind ’vantage ’gainst the scorner,

The two shy knees pressed shyer to the corner;

And Ben began to talk with her, the rather

Because he found out that he knew her father,

Sir Francis Applegarth, of Fenny Compton,

And danced once with her sister Maude at Brompton;

And then he stared until he quite confused her,

More pleased with her than I, who but excused her;

And, when she got out, he, with sheepish glances,

Said he ’d stop too, and call on old Sir Francis.