Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Fuess and Stearns, comps. The Little Book of Society Verse. 1922.

By. Francis Bret Harte

Dolly Varden

DEAR DOLLY! who does not recall

The thrilling page that pictured all

Those charms that held our sense in thrall,

Just as the artist caught her—

As down that English lane she tripped,

In bowered chintz, hat sideways tipped,

Trim-bodiced, bright-eyed, roguish-lipped,

The locksmith’s pretty daughter.

Sweet fragment of the Master’s art!

O simple faith! O rustic heart!

O maid that hath no counterpart

In life’s dry, dog-eared pages!

Where shall we find thy like? Ah, stay!

Methinks I saw her yesterday

In chintz that flowered, as one might say,

Perennial for ages.

Her father’s modest cot was stone,

Five stories high; in style and tone

Composite, and, I frankly own,

Within its walls revealing

Some certain novel, strange ideas;

A Gothic door with Roman piers,

And floors removed some thousand years

From their Pompeiian ceiling.

The small salon where she received

Was Louis Quatorze, and relieved

By Chinese cabinets, conceived

Grotesquely by the heathen;

The sofas were a classic sight—

The Roman bench (sedilia hight);

The chairs were French in gold and white,

And one Elizabethan.

And she, the goddess of that shrine,

Two ringed fingers placed in mine—

The stones were many carats fine,

And of the purest water—

Then dropped a curtsey, far enough

To fairly fill her cretonne puff

And show the petticoat’s rich stuff

That her fond parent bought her.

Her speech was simple as her dress—

Not French the more, but English less,

She loved; yet sometimes, I confess,

I scarce could comprehend her.

Her manners were quite far from shy:

There was a quiet in her eye

Appalling to the Hugh who’d try

With rudeness to offend her.

“But whence,” I cried, “this masquerade?

Some figure for this night’s charade—

A Watteau shepherdess or maid?”

She smiled and begged my pardon:

Why surely you must know the name—

That woman who was Shakespeare’s flame

Or Byron’s—well, it’s all the same:

Why, Lord! I’m Dolly Varden!”