Youths and maidens, blithesome and vain,
Time makes thrusts that you cannot parry;
Mate in season, for who is fain
Under the wintry skies to marry?
Louise Chandler Moulton.
BALLADE OF HIS LADY.
My lady's heart 'twere hard to touch,
And sighs and vows she'd soon repel;
But if she liked one twice as much,
One would not like her half as well;
She careth not for sage or swell,
For guardsman stout or poet lean,
Who haunt Parnassus or Pall Mall;
My lady-love is just thirteen.
She loves a rabbit in a hutch
(A fat Aquinas in his cell),
She loves an aged cat, whose clutch
At breakfast-time exerts a spell,
A most ungracious Florizel.
In fact it's easy to be seen,
Were she at all averse to tell,
My lady-love is just thirteen.
Although she reads the Higher Dutch,
On culture's peaks apart to dwell,
She feigns not; nor of things 'as such'
Does she discourse, nor parallel
Dante and Dante Gabriel;
Yet she has 'views' advanced and keen,
On chocolate and caramel,—
My lady-love is just thirteen.
Envoy.
Madam, just homage you compel,
Mature, self-conscious, and serene,
One heart alone you cannot quell;
My lady-love is just thirteen.
J. B. B. Nichols.