The Lady.
I.
Sir POET, ere you crossed the lawn
(If it was wrong to watch you, pardon)
Behind this weeping birch withdrawn,
I watched you saunter round the garden.
I saw you bend beside the phlox;
Pluck, as you passed, a sprig of myrtle,
Review my well-ranged hollyhocks,
Smile at the fountain’s slender spurtle;
II.
You paused beneath the cherry-tree,
Where my marauder thrush was singing,
Peered at the bee-hives curiously,
And narrowly escaped a stinging;
And then—you see I watched—you passed
Down the espalier walk that reaches
Out to the western wall, and last
Dropped on the seat before the peaches.
III.
What was your thought? You waited long.
Sublime or graceful,—grave,—satiric?
A Morris Greek-and-Gothic song?
A tender Tennysonian lyric?
Tell me. That garden-seat shall be,
So long as speech renown disperses,
Illustrious as the spot where he—
The gifted Blank—composed his verses.
The Poet.
IV.
Madam,—whose uncensorious eye
Grows gracious over certain pages.
Wherein the Jester’s maxims lie,
It may be, thicker than the Sage’s
I hear but to obey, and could
Mere wish of mine the pleasure do you,
Some verse as whimsical as Hood,—
As gay as Praed,—should answer to you.