GWENDOLINE
'TWAS not the brown of chestnut boughs
That shadowed her so finely;
It was the hair that swept her brows,
And framed her face divinely;
Her tawny hair, her purple eyes,
The spirit was ensphered in,
That took you with such swift surprise,
Provided you had peered in.
Her velvet foot amid the moss
And on the daisies patted,
As, querulous with sense of loss,
"And come he early, come he late,"
She saith, "it will undo me;
The sharp fore-speeded shaft of fate
Already quivers through me.
"When I beheld his red-roan steed,
I knew what aim impelled it.
And that dim scarf of silver brede,
I guessed for whom he held it.
I recked not, while he flaunted by,
Of Love's relentless vi'lence
Yet o'er me crashed the summer sky,
In thunders of blue silence.
"His hoof-prints crumbled down the dale,
But left behind their lava;
What should have been my woman's mail
Grew jellied as guava.
I looked him proud, but 'neath my pride
I felt a boneless tremor;
He was the Beér, I descried,
And I was but the Seemer!
"Ah, how to be what then I seemed,
And bid him seem that is so!
We always tangle threads we dreamed,
And contravene our bliss so,
I see the red-roan steed again!
He looks as something sought he;
Why, hoity-toity!—he is fain,
So I'll be cold and haughty!"
Bayard Taylor.