“_Il me faut des emotions._”—BLANCHE AMORY
YOU ask me, Lydia, “whether I,
If you refuse my suit, shall die,”
(Now pray don’t let this hurt you!)
Although the time be out of joint,
I should not think a bodkin’s point
The sole resource of virtue;
Nor shall I, though your mood endure,
Attempt a final Water-cure
Except against my wishes;
For I respectfully decline
To dignify the Serpentine,
And make _hors-d’œuvres_ for fishes;
But if you ask me whether I
Composedly can go,
Without a look, without a sigh,
Why, then I answer—No.
“You are assured,” you sadly say
(If in this most considerate way
To treat my suit your will is),
That I shall “quickly find as fair
Some new Neæra’s tangled hair—
Some easier Amaryllis.”
I cannot promise to be cold
If smiles are kind as yours of old
On lips of later beauties;
Nor can I, if I would, forget
The homage that is Nature’s debt,
While man has social duties;
But if you ask shall I prefer
To you I honour so,
A somewhat visionary Her,
I answer truly—No.
You fear, you frankly add, “to find
In me too late the altered mind
That altering Time estranges.”
To this I make response that we
(As physiologists agree)
Must have septennial changes;
This is a thing beyond control,
And it were best upon the whole
To try and find out whether
We could not, by some means, arrange
This not-to-be-avoided change
So as to change together:
But, had you asked me to allow
That you could ever grow
Less amiable than you are now,—
Emphatically—No.
But—to be serious—if you care
To know how I shall really bear
This much-discussed rejection,
I answer you. As feeling men
Behave, in best romances, when
You outrage their affection;—
With that gesticulatory woe,
By which, as melodramas show,
Despair is indicated;
Enforced by all the liquid grief
Which hugest pocket-handkerchief
Has ever simulated;
And when, arrived so far, you say
In tragic accents “Go,”
Then, Lydia, then ... I still shall stay,
And firmly answer—No.
_Austin Dobson._