AT A READING
by: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
(1836-1906)
- HE spare
professor, grave and bald,
- Began his paper. It was called,
- I think, "A Brief Historic Glance
- At Russia, Germany, and France."
- A glance, but to my best belief
- 'T was almost anything but brief--
- A wide survey, in which the earth
- Was seen before mankind had birth;
- Strange monsters basked them in the sun,
- Behemoth, armored glyptodon,
- And in the dawn's unpractised ray
- The transient dodo winged its way;
- Then, by degrees, through slit and slough,
- We reached Berlin--I don't know how.
- The good Professor's monotone
- Had turned me into senseless stone
- Instanter, but that near me sat
- Hypatia in her new spring hat,
- Blue-eyed, intent, with lips whose bloom
- Lighted the heavy-curtained room.
- Hypatia--ah, what lovely things
- Are fashioned out of eighteen springs!
- At first, in sums of this amount,
- The eighteen winters do not count.
- Just as my eyes were growing dim
- With heaviness, I saw that slim,
- Erect, elastic figure there,
- Like a pond-lily taking air.
- She looked so fresh, so wise, so neat,
- So altogether crisp and sweet,
- I quite forgot what Bismarck said,
- And why the Emperor shook his head,
- And how it was Von Moltke's frown
- Cost France another frontier town.
- The only facts I took away
- From the Professor's theme that day
- Were these: a forehead broad and low,
- Such as antique sculptures show;
- A chin to Greek perfection true;
- Eyes of Astarte's tender blue;
- A high complection without fleck
- Or flaw, and curls about her neck.
"At a Reading" is reprinted
from THE SISTERS' TRAGEDY WITH OTHER POEMS,LYRICAL AND DRAMATIC.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1891. |
MORE POEMS BY THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH |
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