Point Lace and Diamonds

Excerpt

RETROSPECTION.

I'd wandered, for a week or more,
Through hills, and dells, and doleful green'ry,
Lodging at any carnal door,
Sustaining life on pork, and scenery.
A weary scribe, I'd just let slip
My collar, for a short vacation,
And started on a walking trip,
That cheapest form of dissipation—
And vilest, Oh! confess my pen,
That I, prosaic, rather hate your
"Ode to a Sky-lark" sort of men;
I really am not fond of Nature.
Mad longing for a decent meal
And decent clothing overcame me;
There came a blister on my heel—
I gave it up; and who can blame me?
Then wrote my "Pulse of Nature's Heart,"
Which I procured some little cash on,
And quickly packed me to depart
In search of "gilded haunts" of fashion,
Which I might puff at column rates,
To please my host and meet my reckoning;
"Base is the slave who"—hesitates
When wealth, and pleasure both are beckoning.
I sought; I found. Among the swells
I had my share of small successes,
Made languid love to languid belles
And penn'd descriptions of their dresses.
Ah! Millionairess Millicent,
How fair you were! How you adored me!
How many tender hours we spent—
And, oh, beloved, how you bored me!

Is not that fragmentary bit
Of my young verse a perfect prism,
Where worldly knowledge, pleasant wit,
True humor, kindly cynicism,
Refracted by the frolic glass
Of Fancy, play with change incessant?

Great Cæsar! What a sweet young ass
I must have been, when adolescent!

You saw her last, the ball-room's belle,
soufflé, lace and roses blent;
Your worldly worship moved her then;
She does not know you now, in Lent.
See her at prayer! Her pleading hands
Bear not one gem of all her store.
Her face is saint-like. Be rebuked
By those pure eyes, and gaze no more
Turn, turn away! But carry hence
The lesson she has dumbly taught—
That bright young creature kneeling there
With every feeling, every thought
Absorbed in high and holy dreams
Of—new Spring dresses truth to say,
To them the time is sanctified
From Shrove-tide until Easter day.
—Page 4.

A REFORMER.

You call me trifler, fainéant,
And bid me give my life an aim!—
You're most unjust, dear. Hear me out,
And own your hastiness to blame.
I live with but a single thought;
My inmost heart and soul are set
On one sole task—a mighty one—
To simplify our alphabet.
Five vowel sounds we use in speech;
They're A, and E, I, O, and U:
I mean to cut them down to four.
You "wonder what goodthatwill do."
Why, this cold earth will bloom again,
Eden itself be half re-won,
When breaks the dawn of my success
And U and I at last are one.

A tomb where legal ghouls grow fat;
Where buried papers, fold on fold,
Crumble to dust, that 'thwart the sun
Floats dim, a pallid ghost of gold.
The day is dying. All about,
Dark, threat'ning shadows lurk; but still
I ponder o'er a dead girl's name
Fast fading from a dead man's will.
Katrina Harland, fair and sweet,
Sole heiress of your father's land,
Full many a gallant wooer rode
To snare your heart, to win your hand.
And one, perchance—who loved you best,
Feared men might sneer—"he sought her gold"—
And never spoke, but turned away
Stubborn and proud, to call you cold.
Cold? Would I knew! Perhaps you loved,
And mourned him all a virgin life.
Perhaps forgot his very name
As happy mother, happy wife.
Unanswered, sad, I turn away—
"You lovedherfirst, then?"First—well—no—
You little goose, the Harland will
Was proved full sixty years ago....