| |
| GRANDMOTHER’S mother: her age, I guess, | |
| Thirteen summers, or something less; | |
| Girlish bust, but womanly air; | |
| Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair; | |
| Lips that lover has never kissed; | 5 |
| Taper fingers and slender wrist; | |
| Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade; | |
| So they painted the little maid. | |
| |
| On her hand a parrot green | |
| Sits unmoving and broods serene. | 10 |
| Hold up the canvas full in view,— | |
| Look! there ’s a rent the light shines through, | |
| Dark with a century’s fringe of dust,— | |
| That was a Red-Coat’s rapier-thrust! | |
| Such is the tale the lady old, | 15 |
| Dorothy’s daughter’s daughter, told. | |
| |
| Who the painter was none may tell,— | |
| One whose best was not over well; | |
| Hard and dry, it must be confessed, | |
| Flat as a rose that has long been pressed; | 20 |
| Yet in her cheek the hues are bright, | |
| Dainty colors of red and white, | |
| And in her slender shape are seen | |
| Hint and promise of stately mien. | |
| |
| Look not on her with eyes of scorn,— | 25 |
| Dorothy Q. was a lady born! | |
| Ay! since the galloping Normans came, | |
| England’s annals have known her name; | |
| And still to the three-hilled rebel town | |
| Dear is that ancient name’s renown, | 30 |
| For many a civic wreath they won, | |
| The youthful sire and the gray-haired son. | |
| |
| O Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.! | |
| Strange is the gift that I owe to you; | |
| Such a gift as never a king | 35 |
| Save to daughter or son might bring,— | |
| All my tenure of heart and hand, | |
| All my title to house and land; | |
| Mother and sister and child and wife | |
| And joy and sorrow and death and life! | 40 |
| |
| What if a hundred years ago | |
| Those close-shut lips had answered No, | |
| When forth the tremulous question came | |
| That cost the maiden her Norman name, | |
| And under the folds that look so still | 45 |
| The bodice swelled with the bosom’s thrill? | |
| Should I be I, or would it be | |
| One tenth another, to nine tenths me? | |
| |
| Soft is the breath of a maiden’s Yes: | |
| Not the light gossamer stirs with less; | 50 |
| But never a cable that holds so fast | |
| Through all the battles of wave and blast, | |
| And never an echo of speech or song | |
| That lives in the babbling air so long! | |
| There were tones in the voice that whispered then | 55 |
| You may hear to-day in a hundred men. | |
| |
| O lady and lover, how faint and far | |
| Your images hover,—and here we are, | |
| Solid and stirring in flesh and bone,— | |
| Edward’s and Dorothy’s—all their own,— | 60 |
| A goodly record for Time to show | |
| Of a syllable spoken so long ago!— | |
| Shall I bless you, Dorothy, or forgive | |
| For the tender whisper that bade me live? | |
| |
| It shall be a blessing, my little maid! | 65 |
| I will heal the stab of the Red-Coat’s blade, | |
| And freshen the gold of the tarnished frame, | |
| And gild with a rhyme your household name; | |
| So you shall smile on us brave and bright | |
| As first you greeted the morning’s light, | 70 |
| And live untroubled by woes and fears | |
| Through a second youth of a hundred years. | |
| |
