The Poetical Writings of Fitz-Greene Halleck/A Poet’s Daughter
A POET’S DAUGHTER.
FOR THE ALBUM OF MISS * * * *, AT THE REQUEST OF HER FATHER.
“
lady asks the Minstrel’s rhyme.”
A Lady asks? There was a time
When musical as play-bell’s chime
To wearied boy,
That sound would summon dreams sublime
Of pride and joy.
But now the spell hath lost its sway,
Life’s first-born fancies first decay,
Gone are the plumes and pennons gay
Of young Romance;
There linger but her ruins gray,
And broken lance.
’Tis a new world—no more to maid,
Warrior, or bard, is homage paid;
The bay-tree’s, laurel’s, myrtle’s shade,
Men’s thoughts resign;
Heaven placed us here to vote and trade,
Twin tasks divine!
“’Tis youth, ’tis beauty asks; the green
And growing leaves of seventeen
Are round her; and, half hid, half seen,
A violet flower,
Nursed by the virtues she hath been
From childhood’s hour.”
Blind passion’s picture—yet for this
We woo the life-long bridal kiss,
And blend our every hope of bliss
With hers we love;
Unmindful of the serpent’s hiss
In Eden’s grove.
Beauty—the fading rainbow’s pride,
Youth—’twas the charm of her who died
At dawn, and by her coffin’s side
A grandsire stands,
Age-strengthened, like the oak storm-tried
Of mountain-lands.
Youth’s coffin—hush the tale it tells!
Be silent, memory’s funeral bells!
Lone in one heart, her home, it dwells
Untold till death,
And where the grave-mound greenly swells
O’er buried faith.
“But what if hers are rank and power,
Armies her train, a throne her bower,
A kingdom’s gold her marriage-dower,
Broad seas and lands?
What if from bannered hall and tower
A queen commands?”
A queen? Earth’s regal moons have set.
Where perished Marie Antoinette?
Where’s Bordeaux’s mother? Where the jet-
Black Haytian dame?
And Lusitania’s coronet?
And Angoulême?
Empires to-day are upside down,
The castfe kneels before the town,
The monarch fears a printer’s frown
A brickbat’s range;
Give me, in preference to a crown,
Five shillings change.
“But she who asks, though first among
The good, the beautiful, the young,
The birthright of a spell more strong
Than these hath brought her;
She is your kinswoman in song,
A Poet’s daughter.”
A Poet’s daughter? Could I claim
The consanguinity of fame,
Veins of my intellectual frame!
Your blood would glow
Proudly to sing that gentlest name
Of aught below.
A Poet’s daughter—dearer word
Lip hath not spoken nor listener heard,
Fit theme for song of bee and bird
From morn till even,
And wind-harp by the breathing stirred
Of starlit heaven.
My spirit’s wings are weak, the fire
Poetic comes but to expire,
Her name needs not my humble lyre
To bid it live;
She hath already from her sire
All bard can give.