tness of a supple boot
Which Cinderella would have found too small,
One scarcely sees your little pointed foot
Flash in the flashing circle of the Ball.

Shod in the softness of a supple boot
Which Cinderella would have found too small,
One scarcely sees your little pointed foot
Flash in the flashing circle of the Ball.

In the soft baths that indolence has brought
Your once brown hands have got the ivory white,
The pallor of the lily which has caught
The silver moonbeam of a summer night:

On your white arm half clouded, and half clear,
Pearls shine in bracelets made of chiselled gold;
On your trim waist a shawl of true Cashmere
Aesthetically falls in waving fold:

Honiton point and costly Mechlin lace,
With gothic guipure of a creamy white--
The matchless cobwebs of long vanished days--
Combine to make your presence rich and bright.

But I preferred a simpler guise than that,
Your frock of muslin or plain calico,
Simple adornments, with a veilless hat,
Boots, black or grey, a collar white and low.

The splendor your admirers now adore
Will never bring me back my ancient heats;
And you are dead and buried, all the more
For the silk shroud where heart no longer beats.

So when I worked at this funereal dirge,
Where grief for a lost lifetime stands confessed,
I wore a clerk's costume of sable serge,
Though not gold eye glasses or pleated vest.

My penholder was wrapped in mournful crape,
The paper with black lines was bordered round
On which I labored to provide escape
For love's last memory hidden in the ground.

And now, when all the heart that I can save
Is used to furnish forth its epitaph.
Gay as a sexton digging his own grave
I burst into a wild and frantic laugh;

A laugh engendered by a mocking vein;
The pen I grasped was trembling as I wrote;
And even while I laughed, a scalding rain
Of tears turned all the writing to a blot.

It was the 24th of December, and that evening the Latin Quarte