POETRY.
IN passionate dead days that were Your loyal lovers pledged you deep: Royally kind and warmly fair, By tavern fire, on castled steep
Where worms of desolation creep—
You were the toasts, a gallant show, Ladies, too wonderful to weep, How ye were loved once, long ago.
Your pictured eyes with smiling stare Look from the dealer's gilded heap
With rose-crowned heads and bosoms bare—
Now is your full tide shrunk to neap ; No more your stiff brocade may sweep Your stately gardens to and fro : White shepherdesses without sheep, How ye were loved once, long ago.
Your scented curls of shining hair, Gold as the corn grown full to reap, Like thistledown to the wide air Are scattered; small men peer, and peep. And pry, and chatter, and make cheap The things you treasured ; none shall trow How your eyes made men's hearts to leap, How ye were loved once, long ago.
L'Envoi.
Ladies, your beauty sunk in sleep, What shall it profit ye to know, In the long silence that ye keep, How ye were loved once, long ago ? BALLADE OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LADIES.
ETHEL TALTOT,
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