Page:Poems Piatt.djvu/204

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
190
"A LETTER FROM TO-MORROW."
     To-night, in lights and lace,
     There Madam holds her place,
Brief as the foreign flowers that drop dead at her feet.

     Madonna-hair and eyes
     Remind one of the skies,
(No other picture there more subtly hides its paint).
     Divinely of the earth!—
     That last dear dress from Worth
Is too Parisian, perhaps, to fit-a saint.

     This Letter's shadowy date,
     "To-morrow," folds her fate—
(Reach for it, eager arm, so beautiful and bare!)
     She reads: "Your hair is grey,
     And men forget the day—
Can you remember it—the day when you were fair!'

     He reads—her stately lord,
     Out-glittering some chance sword,
Or right new gold, perhaps, wherewith his name was made:
     "Taken as in a snare!—
     Called by a bird of the air
To justice, go and give and take it, O betrayed!"