Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.
Charles Stuart Calverley 183184On the Brink
CalverleI
A wild flower in her hair to twine;
And wish’d that it had been my luck
To call her mine;
Mad words her babe within its cot,
And felt particularly glad
That it had not.
That she was uttering what she shouldn’t;
And thought that I would chide, and then
I thought I would n’t.
Those pouting coral lips, and chided:
A Rhadamanthus, in my place,
Had done as I did.
Is chain’d there oft by Beauty’s spell;
And, more than that, I did not know
The widow well.
Still mute—(O brothers, was it sin?)—
I drank, unutterably mov’d,
Her beauty in.
As on her upturn’d face and dress
The moonlight fell, “Would she say No,—
By chance, or Yes?”
Betwixt me and that magic moon,
That I already was almost
A finish’d coon.
And sooth’d with smiles her little daughter;
And gave it, if I ’m right, a sup
Of barley-water;
Which only mothers’ tongues can utter,
Snow’d with deft hand the sugar o’er
Its bread-and-butter;
Don’t women do these things in private?)—
I felt that if I lost her, I
Should not survive it.
The past, the future, I forgat ’em,—
“Oh, if you ’d kiss me as you do
That thankless atom!”
And froze the sentence on my lips:
“They err who marry wives that make
Those little slips.”
Some copy to my boyhood set;
And that ’s perhaps the reason I’m
Unmarried yet.
And told her love with widow’s pride?
I never found out that, because
I never tried.
Hearts may be hard though lips are coral;
And angry words are angry words:
And that ’s the moral.