Fuess and Stearns, comps. The Little Book of Society Verse. 1922.
By. Silas Weir MitchellAn Old Man to an Old Madeira
W
And blushed before and after,
Your life, a rose ’twixt May and June,
Was stirred by breeze of laughter.
A kiss where there were plenty;
Enough the fragrance of your lips
When I was five-and-twenty.
We met, and then we parted:
You gave me all you had to give,
Nor were you broken-hearted!
Oh! fair inconstant lady,
While you have gone your shameless way
’Till life has passed its heyday.
You matronly and older;
And somewhat gone your maiden blush,
And I, well, rather colder.
And I am slowly graying,
We meet, remindful of the past,
When we two went a-Maying.
Still flaunt your faded roses,
The arctic loneliness of age
Around my pathway closes.
Egeria of gay dinners,
I leave your unforgotten charm
To other younger sinners.
Of old colonial days,
With clouded cane and broidered coat,
And very artful ways?
Some wicked, pleasant vow,
And swear no courtly dame had words
As sweet as “thee” and “thou”?
In eager song or sonnet,
And find a merry way to cheat
Her kiss-defying bonnet?
Amid this forest shady,
The dainty flower at her feet
Was like his Quaker lady?
Or was his love enough?
And did she learn to sport the fan,
And use the patch and puff?
And, naughty grown and older,
Was pleased to show a dainty neck,
Above a dainty shoulder.
She saw, as in a dream,
The meeting-house, the home sedate,
The Schuylkill’s quiet stream;
Her heart went wide afield,
To where, amid the woods of May,
A blush its love revealed.
And powder and brocade,
The Quaker ladies at her feet
Their quaint obeisance made.