TO “LYDIA LANGUISH”

“Il me faut des emotions.”—Blanche Amory

YOU ask me, Lydia, “whether I,

If you refuse my suit, shall die,”

(Now pray don’t let this hurt you!)

Although the time be out of joint,

I should not think a bodkin’s point

The sole resource of virtue;

Nor shall I, though your mood endure,

Attempt a final Water-cure

Except against my wishes;

For I respectfully decline

To dignify the Serpentine,

And make hors-d’œuvres for fishes;

But if you ask me whether I

Composedly can go,

Without a look, without a sigh,

Why, then I answer—No.

“You are assured,” you sadly say

(If in this most considerate way

To treat my suit your will is),

That I shall “quickly find as fair

Some new Neæra’s tangled hair—

Some easier Amaryllis.”

I cannot promise to be cold

If smiles are kind as yours of old

On lips of later beauties;

Nor can I, if I would, forget

The homage that is Nature’s debt,

While man has social duties;

But if you ask shall I prefer

To you I honour so,

A somewhat visionary Her,

I answer truly—No.

You fear, you frankly add, “to find

In me too late the altered mind

That altering Time estranges.”

To this I make response that we

(As physiologists agree)

Must have septennial changes;

This is a thing beyond control,

And it were best upon the whole

To try and find out whether

We could not, by some means, arrange

This not-to-be-avoided change

So as to change together:

But, had you asked me to allow

That you could ever grow

Less amiable than you are now,—

Emphatically—No.

But—to be serious—if you care

To know how I shall really bear

This much-discussed rejection,

I answer you. As feeling men

Behave, in best romances, when

You outrage their affection;—

With that gesticulatory woe,

By which, as melodramas show,

Despair is indicated;

Enforced by all the liquid grief

Which hugest pocket-handkerchief

Has ever simulated;

And when, arrived so far, you say

In tragic accents “Go,”

Then, Lydia, then . . . I still shall stay,

And firmly answer—No.

Austin Dobson.