She stood so calm, so like a ghost
Betwixt me and that magic moon,
That I already was almost
A finish’d coon.
But when she caught adroitly up
And soothed with smiles her little daughter;
And gave it, if I’m right, a sup
Of barley-water;
And, crooning still the strange sweet lore
Which only mothers’ tongues can utter,
Snow’d with deft hand the sugar o’er
Its bread and butter;
And kiss’d it clingingly—(Ah, why
Don’t women do these things in private?)—
I felt that if I lost her, I
Should not survive it:
And from my mouth the words nigh flew—
The past, the future, I forgat ’em:
“Oh! if you’d kiss me as you do
That thankless atom!”
But this thought came ere yet I spake,
And froze the sentence on my lips:
“They err, who marry wives that make
Those little slips.”
It came like some familiar rhyme,
Some copy to my boyhood set;
And that’s perhaps the reason I’m
Unmarried yet.
Would she have own’d how pleased she was,
And told her love with widow’s pride?
I never found out that, because
I never tried.
Be kind to babes and beasts and birds:
Hearts may be hard, though lips are coral;
And angry words are angry words:
And that’s the moral.