A STUDY IN BROWN.
I've caught you, hazel-eyed brunette, day-dreaming, chin on hand!
Don't think, now, that my stolen sketch is bold and contraband!
Nay, rather, 'tis the duty that's imposed on ev'ry beauty,
To grant that with respectful glance her profile may be scanned.
To picture such a wealth of brown would Vandyck's self delight;
Brown eyes I see, and waving hair, brown as a summer night.
I cannot do you justice, but this thumb-nail sketch, I trust, is
A deep brown-study rendered into simple black and white.
In reverie reflective, has your wayward fancy strayed,
It may be, to last summer's tryst in some wild English glade,
Or old-world forest-garden, where, like Rosalind in Arden,
Your troth you plighted, or, love-lorn, outmourned the Nut-brown Maid?
You're wand'ring in Mahatma-land, and counting astral sheep?
And gathering wool that never grew, a Brownie-led Bo-peep,
Or, possibly, pursuant of an Ego playing truant.
And lost amid the labyrinth of dim hypnotic sleep?
For all I know, you're musing in this meditative trance
On modern and sublunar joys, as dinner, dress, and dance!
Or is it toothache merely that—well, makes you stare so queerly?
(Somehow I ne'er can draw the line 'twixt bathos and romance!)
If thus I seem inquisitive, don't kill me with a frown!
Though times are hard, in vulgar phrase, I'll plank my money down!
Your train of thought to share (if you'll accept a penny-tariff),
I tender, with my compliments, the coin that's called a "brown"!