To Mary Pickford - Moving-picture Actress

(On hearing she was leaving the moving-pictures for the stage.)          Mary Pickford, doll divine,          Year by year, and every day          At the moving-picture play,          You have been my valentine.          Once a free-limbed page in hose,          Baby-Rosalind in flower,          Cloakless, shrinking, in that hour          How our reverent passion rose,          How our fine desire you won.          Kitchen-wench another day,          Shapeless, wooden every way.          Next, a fairy from the sun.          Once you walked a grown-up strand          Fish-wife siren, full of lure,          Snaring with devices sure          Lads who murdered on the sand.          But on most days just a child          Dimpled as no grown-folk are,          Cold of kiss as some north star,          Violet from the valleys wild.          Snared as innocence must be,          Fleeing, prisoned, chained, half-dead -          At the end of tortures dread          Roaring cowboys set you free.          Fly, O song, to her to-day,          Like a cowboy cross the land.          Snatch her from Belasco's hand          And that prison called Broadway.          All the village swains await          One dear lily-girl demure,          Saucy, dancing, cold and pure,          Elf who must return in state.