Maryland, my Maryland, and other poems/To the Queen of the Wax Dolls
TO THE QUEEN OF THE WAX DOLLS
’Twas in the old church yard I told you all,
Beneath the Norway pine;
There, by your mother’s grave, I thought to call
That poor lost mother mine.
I saw you bend above an orphan child
To kiss its winsome face;
This woman, quoth I, is all undefiled,
A miracle of grace.
The world could never guess your riddle quite,
Nor shake your soft repose;
The same meek orbs that shone upon the night,
Were stars when morning rose.
Oh hypocrite! your cool, Antarctic sighs
Make memory an eclipse;
I feel the serpent from those poisoned eyes
Browsing upon my lips.
You changed. You stumbled from the better path;
You robed your vows on biers;
And now my lexicon of love and wrath
Is syllabled with tears.
You changed! Your eyes are purple-lidded beads,
Your hair a coil of flax,
And the cold splendor of your shape recedes
Into a mould of wax!
O, wormwood! that a thing of wax and wire
Could make me love it so;
I, with a Hecla-heart and nerve of fire,
Gasping amid that snow.
And now, repenting, you would be my wife,
Would pawn your troth to me—
Poor Doll! beyond the icebergs of your life
There throbs no open sea!
I sought it once, and lo! my former self
Is shipwrecked in the quest.
See the impassioned Franklin, with his pelf,
Dead on your gelid breast.
You scream—’tis but a delicate doll’s cry—
A trick, as all perceive it;
They say you’re stuffed with sawdust—though a lie,
A skeptic might believe it!