Page 32 - Poetry-Romance

Her Fan

So I am to keep you, little fan!
While she goes to waltz with the eighteenth man.

Well! now that I have you, the question, sweet,
Is, whether to kiss you, or batter and beat?

That you’ve been her accomplice, in moments gone by,
In tricks to torment me, you cannot deny!

How oft, from her side, I’ve been ordered to go,
To hunt for your fanship, high and low,

And been, for not finding you, frowned at and chid
While, ‘neath her own furbelows, basely you hid! ‘

If you weren’t just warm from her clasp, I fear
You’d have fluttered your last at soirées, my dear!

* * *
This, too, is the cord she cruelly twists,
In my envious sight, round her milk-white wrists;

And this, the edge she’d do nothing but bite,
When I prayed for one word, in the soft starlight.

She’s a flirt, wretched fan! from her head to her foot,
In its dainty, supremely absurd little boot!

(Though one such wickedness wouldn’t surmise,
From those tender lips, and shy, sweet eyes!

And she looks, to-night, in that white robe’s flow,
Fair and pure as a lily in snow:)

But her heart, under all, may be deep and true
The ocean has frivolous froth on its blue!—

That she likes me a little, I can’t help believing!
If I only were sure of that fact, all-retrieving!

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