THE DANCE AT THE PHŒNIX
A solace in domestic joys,
And ere the vanished pair of boys
Were sent to sun her cot.
She numbered near on sixty years,
And passed as elderly,
When, in the street, with flush of fears,
One day discovered she,
From shine of swords and thump of drum,
Her early loves from war had come,
The King's-Own Cavalry.
She turned aside, and bowed her head
Anigh Saint Peter's door;
"Alas for chastened thoughts!" she said:
"I'm faded now, and hoar,
And yet those notes—they thrill me through,
And those gay forms move me anew
As in the years of yore!" . . .
—'Twas Christmas, and the Phœnix Ina
Was lit with tapers tall,
For thirty of the trooper men
Had vowed to give a ball
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