Contents -Volume INDEX -AUTHOR INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

On the Trapping of a Mouse that Lived in a Lady’s Escritoire

By Clarence Clough Buel (1850–1933)

POOR mousie! you have learned too late,

This lady’s scorn of mice—and men,

Who envy yet thy better fate,—

To hear the music of her pen;

To kiss the rug her feet have kissed;

To gambol round her dainty slippers,

And wonder if, in Beauty’s list,

The foot of Venus could outstrip hers;

To draw the splendor of her eyes,

That flash as they discover you,

And picture in their swift surprise

Your fleeting bliss, and sentence, too;

To have her fingers set the snare

And bait with crumbs have touched her lip,

Inviting to ambrosial fare

And sudden death’s endearing grip:

While men may sigh and sigh in vain,

And suffer torturing Love’s demur,

Without a smile to ease their pain

Or even leave to die for her.

1880.