To Elsie
The pure products of America
go crazy—
mountain folk from Kentucky
. . .
The pure products of America
go crazy—
mountain folk from Kentucky
. . .
Gay Fashion thou Goddess so pleasing,
However imperious thy sway;
Like a mistress capricious and teasing, . . .
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicéan barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, . . .
Most truly honoured, and as truly dear,
If worth in me or ought I do appear,
Who can of right better demand the same . . .
1
Take your boulevards, your Locust Street,
Your Chestnut, Pine, your Olive,
. . .
In the cards and at the bend in the road
we never saw you
in the womb and in the crossfire . . .
Farewell, too little and too lately known,
Whom I began to think and call my own;
For sure our souls were near ally'd; and thine
. . .
If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.
If ever wife was happy in a man, . . .
I am weary of the working,
Weary of the long day’s heat;
To thy comfortable bosom, . . .
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
. . .