8. O! Lady of the Eve

 

Unless a remedy of urban song

Can’t hope, Lady, to reach your waking ear,

By your own blighted spring,

Your bulbs bitten by the glens,

O nymph invoked! While now the stirring sun

Creeps in yon eastern tent, whose dirty skirts,

While last night’s vapors wove,

Overhang your bed;

Save here is calm; unless the mean, old bat,

With short, shrill, shriek fits, comes to break a wing,

Or if the hairpin winds

On a backing made of horn,

As he has come unto your earthly path,

Amidst his morning shave and treasure hum.

Now teach me, maid provoked,

To play some softer strain,

Whose theme that seeks to earn a quiet vale,

And not in silence, for not kindness mute,

As musing light, I hail,

Your bleary-eyed return.

For when yon shrouded evening-star won’t show

Her compass magnet for your guiding lamp,

In darkest hours, when elves,

Who gathered lettuce the day,

And honored nymphs, who wear a lace of sedge,

That dries out never new, and readier still,

The Dark Seducer neat,

Drives out his private car,

Don’t lead poor votaress, where some frigid lake,

Takes the lone pier, or an old rocky pile,

Or downtown port of grey

Lays out the steel’s cold gleam;

Let neither part of Zephyrs nor North’s rain,

Proscribe your sure steps upon the old grove,

Which, by the other side,

Prospects your newborn child,

And the empty vaults, and churches spires,

And cedes the mission bell, concedes to all,

Your painted fingers draw,

The midnight bridal veil.

While Spring shall force an ice bath, as she may wont,

And drown your tresses – O! Lady of the Eve –

As summer’s ranting sport

Turns nighttime to red dawn,

While blustery autumn proves dependent leaves,

And winter’s frozen over bulbs again,

Suspend the weekend plane,

Which barely mends your dress,

Perhaps through the small keyhole of my door,

Shall Industry, Land, and all Labor,

Take some postponement,

And quest your maiden’s name.