Lines Suggested By The Fourteenth Of February - Ii
Darkness succeeds to twilight:
Through lattice and through skylight
The stars no doubt, if one looked out,
Might be observed to shine:
And sitting by the embers
I elevate my members
On a stray chair, and then and there
Commence a Valentine.
Yea! by St. Valentinus,
Emma shall not be minus
What all young ladies, whate'er their grade is,
Expect to-day no doubt:
Emma the fair, the stately -
Whom I beheld so lately,
Smiling beneath the snow-white wreath
Which told that she was 'out.'
Wherefore fly to her, swallow,
And mention that I'd 'follow,'
And 'pipe and trill,' et cetera, till
I died, had I but wings:
Say the North's 'true and tender,'
The South an old offender;
And hint in fact, with your well-known tact,
All kinds of pretty things.
Say I grow hourly thinner,
Simply abhor my dinner -
Tho' I do try and absorb some viand
Each day, for form's sake merely:
And ask her, when all's ended,
And I am found extended,
With vest blood-spotted and cut carotid,
To think on Her's sincerely.
Lines Suggested By The Fourteenth Of February - I
Ere the morn the East has crimsoned,
When the stars are twinkling there,
(As they did in Watts's Hymns, and
Made him wonder what they were
When the forest-nymphs are beading
Fern and flower with silvery dew -
My infallible proceeding
Is to wake, and think of you.
When the hunter's ringing bugle
Sounds farewell to field and copse,
And I sit before my frugal
Meal of gravy-soup and chops:
When (as Gray remarks) 'the moping
Owl doth to the moon complain,'
And the hour suggests eloping -
Fly my thoughts to you again.
May my dreams be granted never?
Must I aye endure affliction
Rarely realised, if ever,
In our wildest works of fiction?
Madly Romeo loved his Juliet;
Copperfield began to pine
When he hadn't been to school yet -
But their loves were cold to mine.
Give me hope, the least, the dimmest,
Ere I drain the poisoned cup:
Tell me I may tell the chymist
Not to make that arsenic up!
Else, this heart shall soon cease throbbing;
And when, musing o'er my bones,
Travellers ask, 'Who killed Cock Robin?'
They'll be told, 'Miss Sarah J-s.'
