Page:What answer dickinson.djvu/13

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What Answer?
3

of rippling hair like burnished gold, flung back on the one side, sweeping low across brow and cheek on the other; eyes

"Of a deep, soft, lucent hue,
Eyes too expressive to be blue,
Too lovely to be gray."

People involuntarily thought of the pink and flower of chivalry as they looked at him, or imagined, in some indistinct fashion, that they heard the old songs of Percy and Douglas, or the later lays of the cavaliers, as they heard his voice, a voice that was just now humming one of these same lays:

"Then mounte! then mounte, brave gallants, all,
And don your helmes amaine;
Death's couriers, Fame and Honor, call
Us to the field againe."

"Stuff!" he cried impatiently, looking wistfully at the men's faces going by, "stuff ! We look like gallants to ride a tilt at the world, and die for Honor and Fame,—we!"

"I thank God, Willie, you are not called upon for any such sacrifice."

"Ah, little mother, well you may!" he answered, smiling, and taking her hand, "well you may, for I am afraid I should fall dreadfully short when the time came; and then how ashamed you 'd be of your big boy, who took his ease at home, with the great drums