Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.
I. AdmirationAn Experience and a Moral
Frederick Swartwout Cozzens (18181869)I
She brought it back; I laid it by:
’T was little either had to say,—
She was so strange, and I so shy.
The sprouting buds, the birds in tune,—
And Time stood still and wreathed his wings
With rosy links from June to June.
What peril tempt? what hardship bear?
But with her—ah! she never knew
My heart and what was hidden there!
Seemed a little maid bereft of sense;
But in the crowd, all life and joy,
And full of blushful impudence.
A mate her life and love to share,—
And little cares sprang up like weeds
And played around her elbow-chair.
Trimmed my own lamp, and kept it bright,
Till age’s touch my hair besprent
With rays and gleams of silver light.
Which she perused in days gone by;
And as I read, such passion shook
My soul,—I needs must curse or cry.
In old, half-faded pencil-signs,
As if she yielded—bit by bit—
Her heart in dots and underlines.
I know it; let me here record
This maxim: Lend no girl a book
Unless you read it afterward!