Fuess and Stearns, comps. The Little Book of Society Verse. 1922.
By. Charles Stuart CalverleyOn the Brink
I
A wildflower 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 should n’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 moved,
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 soothed 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
These 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.