Blow Me Eyes

Love employs, with equal favor,
Things of good and evil savor;

That which first appeared to part,
Warmed, at last, the maiden's heart.

Under one impartial banner,
Life, the hunter, Love the tanner,
Draw, from every beast they snare,
Comfort for a wedded pair!

115

Bayard Taylor.

BLOW ME EYES!

WHEN I was young and full o' pride,

A-standin' on the grass

And gazin' o'er the water-side,

I seen a fisher lass.

"O, fisher lass, be kind awhile,"

I asks 'er quite unbid.

"Please look into me face and smile". And, blow me eyes, she did!

O, blow me light and blow me blow,
I didn't think she'd charm me so-
But, blow me eyes, she did!

She seemed so young and beautiful
I had to speak perlite,

(The afternoon was long and dull,

But she was short and bright).

"This ain't no place," I says, "to standLet's take a walk instid,

Each holdin' of the other's hand

And, blow me eyes, she did!

O, blow me light and blow me blow,
I sort o' thunk she wouldn't go-
But, blow me eyes, she did!

And as we walked along a lane

With no one else to see,

Me heart was filled with sudden pain,
And so I says to she:

"If you would have me actions speak
The words what can't be hid,
You'd sort o' let me kiss yer cheek".
And, blow me eyes, she did!

O, blow me light and blow me blow,
How sweet she was I didn't know-
But, blow me eyes, she did!

But pretty soon me shipmate Jim
Came strollin' down the beach,
And she began a-oglin' him

As pretty as a peach.

"O, fickle maid o' false intent,"

Impulsively I chid,

"Why don't you go and wed that gent?"
And, blow me eyes, she did!

O, blow me light and blow me blow,
I didn't think she'd treat me so-

But, blow me eyes, she did!

Wallace Irwin.

FIRST LOVE

O MY earliest love, who, ere I number'd
Ten sweet summers, made my bosom thrill!
Will a swallow-or a swift, or some bird-
Fly to her and say, I love her still?

Say my life's a desert drear and arid,
To its one green spot I aye recur:
Never, never-although three times married-
Have I cared a jot for aught but her.

First Love

No, mine own! though early forced to leave you,

Still my heart was there where first we met; In those "Lodgings with an ample sea-view," Which were, forty years ago, To Let."

There I saw her first, our landlord's oldest
Little daughter. On a thing so fair
Thou, O Sun,-who (so they say) beholdest
Everything, hast gazed, I tell thee, ne'er.

There she sat-so near me, yet remoter
Than a star-a blue-eyed, bashful imp:
On her lap she held a happy bloater,
'Twixt her lips a yet more happy shrimp.

And I loved her, and our troth we plighted
On the morrow by the shingly shore:
In a fortnight to be disunited

By a bitter fate forevermore.

O my own, my beautiful, my blue-eyed!

To be young once more, and bite my thumb At the world and all its cares with you, I'd Give no inconsiderable sum.

Hand in hand we tramp'd the golden seaweed,
Soon as o'er the gray cliff peep'd the dawn:
Side by side, when came the hour for tea, we'd
Crunch the mottled shrimp and hairy prawn:-

Has she wedded some gigantic shrimper,

That sweet mite with whom I loved to play?
Is she girt with babes that whine and whimper,
That bright being who was always gay?

Yes-she has at least a dozen wee things!
Yes I see her darning corduroys,
Scouring floors, and setting out the tea-things,
For a howling herd of hungry boys,

117

In a home that reeks of tar and sperm-oil!
But at intervals she thinks, I know,
Of those days which we, afar from turmoil,
Spent together forty years ago.

O my earliest love, still unforgotten,
With your downcast eyes of dreamy blue!
Never, somehow, could I seem to cotton
To another as I did to you!

Charles Stuart Calverley.

WHAT IS A WOMAN LIKE?

A WOMAN is like to-but stay

What a woman is like, who can say?
There is no living with or without one.
Love bites like a fly,

Now an ear, now an eye,

Buzz, buzz, always buzzing about one.
When she's tender and kind

She is like to my mind,
(And Fanny was so, I remember).
She's like to-Oh, dear!

She's as good, very near,

As a ripe, melting peach in September.

If she laugh, and she chat,

Play, joke, and all that,

And with smiles and good humor she meet me,

She's like a rich dish

Of venison or fish,

That cries from the table, Come eat me!

But she'll plague you and vex you,

Distract and perplex you;

False-hearted and ranging,

Unsettled and changing.

What then do you think, she is like?

Like sand? Like a rock?

Like a wheel?

Like a clock?

Ay, a clock that is always at strike.

Mis' Smith

Her head's like the island folks tell on,

Which nothing but monkeys can dwell on;
Her heart's like a lemon-so nice

She carves for each lover a slice;

In truth she's to me,

Like the wind, like the sea,

Whose raging will hearken to no man;

Like a mill, like a pill,

Like a flail, like a whale,

Like an ass, like a glass

Whose image is constant to no man;

Like a shower, like a flower,

Like a fly, like a pie,

Like a pea, like a flea,

Like a thief, like-in brief,

She's like nothing on earth-but a woman!

119

Unknown.

MIS' SMITH

ALL day she hurried to get through,
The same as lots of wimmin do;
Sometimes at night her husban' said,
"Ma, ain't you goin' to come to bed?"
And then she'd kinder give a hitch,
And pause half way between a stitch,
And sorter sigh, and say that she
Was ready as she'd ever be,
She reckoned.

And so the years went one by one,
An' somehow she was never done;
An' when the angel said, as how
"Mis' Smith, it's time you rested now,"
She sorter raised her eyes to look

A second, as a stitch she took;

All right, I'm comin' now," says she,

I'm ready as I'll ever be,

I reckon."

Albert Bigelow Paine.