Why, I was scarce fourteen,
And only once had seen
Sweet Caroline, the pride of Bangalore,
When straight to her I wrote
On pink, a gushing note,
In which my love, by all the stars, I swore!
But very strange to say,
Upon that self-same day,
I met three sisters, Alice, Clare, and Nelly:
Nelly had golden hair,
Alice sang well, and Clare
Was a great hand at making guava jelly!
Bound by this triple chain,
I knew not, in my pain,
To which of these fair three to bend my knees:
When at a ball one night
Burst on my raptured sight
Star-like, the charms of my serene Louise.
For, ah! I must confess
A boundless amorousness
Ingrain'd and rooted in my nature is;
A girl I cannot see
But straight there wakes in me
Unutterable longing for a kiss!
When last, Madras, in thee
I saw sweet Rosalie,
With eyes so blue, so bright, and O! so merry,—
I loved her,—till I met
The coy and pale Annette,
A sweet French rose that blooms in Pondicherry.
To Trichy next I came,
And there another flame
Blazed for a little, then was quench'd in tears
For soon I learnt, enraged,
That Agnes was engaged
To Major Spooney of the Fusiliers.
But why should I dilate
Further upon my fate
Of loving many maids but wedding none?
How Maud my heart perplext,
Then Annie, Constance next,—
The last a widow, aged twenty-one?
Enough for me to say
That now, though I grow gray,
My heart's as warm and tender as of yore.
Yet, though my love burns bright
It sheds a softer light,
A milder radiance, mellowing evermore!
For now, not one, nor two,
But every maid I view
I love, with love that widens with my years.
And when I pass away,
Reader, weep not, but say,
Chutney is with the cherubs—pretty dears!