Dolly Varden

Dear Dolly! who does not recall     The thrilling page that pictured all     Those charms that held our sense in thrall     Just as the artist caught her,     As down that English lane she tripped,     In bowered chintz, hat sideways tipped,     Trim-bodiced, bright-eyed, roguish-lipped,     The locksmiths pretty daughter?     Sweet fragment of the Masters art!     O simple faith! O rustic heart!     O maid that hath no counterpart     In lifes dry, dog-eared pages!     Where shall we find thy like? Ah, stay!     Methinks I saw her yesterday     In chintz that flowered, as one might say,     Perennial for ages.     Her fathers modest cot was stone,     Five stories high; in style and tone     Composite, and, I frankly own,     Within its walls revealing     Some certain novel, strange ideas:     A Gothic door with Roman piers,     And floors removed some thousand years,     From their Pompeian ceiling.     The small salon where she received     Was Louis Quatorze, and relieved     By Chinese cabinets, conceived     Grotesquely by the heathen;     The sofas were a classic sight,     The Roman bench (sedilia hight);     The chairs were French in gold and white,     And one Elizabethan.     And she, the goddess of that shrine,     Two ringed fingers placed in mine,     The stones were many carats fine,     And of the purest water,     Then dropped a curtsy, far enough     To fairly fill her cretonne puff     And show the petticoats rich stuff     That her fond parent bought her.     Her speech was simple as her dress,     Not French the more, but English less,     She loved; yet sometimes, I confess,     I scarce could comprehend her.     Her manners were quite far from shy.     There was a quiet in her eye     Appalling to the Hugh whod try     With rudeness to offend her.     But whence, I cried, this masquerade?     Some figure for to-nights charade,     A Watteau shepherdess or maid?     She smiled and begged my pardon:     Why, surely you must know the name,     That woman who was Shakespeares flame     Or Byrons, well, its all the same:     Why, Lord! Im Dolly Varden!