For, is this Emmy that I see?
A fragile domesticity
I seem to half surprise
In the evasions of those eyes.
Once a child’s cloudless eyes, they seem
Lost in the blue depths of a dream,
As though, for innocent hours,
To stray with love among the flowers.
Without regret, without desire,
In those old days of love on hire,
Child, child, what will you do,
Emmy, now love is come to you?
Already, in so brief a while,
The gleam has faded from your smile;
This grave and tender air
Leaves you, for all but one, less fair.
Then, you were heedless, happy, gay,
Immortally a child; to-day
A woman, at the years’ control:
Undine has found a soul.
AT THE CAVOUR.
WINE, the red coals, the flaring gas,
Bring out a brighter tone in cheeks
That learn at home before the glass
The flush that eloquently speaks.
The blue-grey smoke of cigarettes
Curls from the lessening ends that glow;
The men are thinking of the bets,
The women of the debts, they owe.
Then their eyes meet, and in their eyes
The accustomed smile comes up to call,
A look half miserably wise.
Half heedlessly ironical.