Page 46 - Poetry-Romance

And some pronounced her pills delightful.
‘Twas strange—I knew not what it meant
She seemed a nymph from Eldorado;
Where’er she came, where’er she went,
Grief lost its gloomy shadow.

Like all the rest, I too grew ill;
My aching heart there was no quelling.
I tremble at my doctor’s bill,—
And lo! the items still are swelling.
The drugs I’ve drunk you’d weep to hear!
They’ve quite enriched the fair concocter,
And I’m a ruined man, I fear,
Unless—I wed the Doctor!

— Samuel Minturn Peck (Century Magazine, 1885)

An Untutored Mind

When I was but a lad of eight,
And Dorothy was turning seven,
My life seemed spent close by the gate
Of what I had imagined Heaven;
So sweet was Dorothy, and mild,
To every fault of mine so tender,
I grew to love her as a child
Accustomed always to befriend her.

Through school hours I observed her dress
Until I knew each shade of satin;
The habit often cost recess
And many weary lines of Latin.
She very seldom turned her face,

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