The Columbian

Since you have asked, I needs must tell the history
Of how I gained your pearly little glove:
Alas! it is the key to no soft mystery,
Nor gauge of tourney in the lists of love

'Twas thus I found it—through the city's bustle
I wandered one still Autumn eve. alone :
A tall, slight form brushed by with silken rustle.
And passed into a carriage, and was gone.

One glance I had. in that I caught the gleaming
Of violet eves. o'er which the rippling tress
Glanced gold-a face like those we see in dreaming,
As perfect in Its shadowy loveliness

And so she passed. a glorious light about her
Clothed. Like a Summer dawn. in silver-gray,
And left the crowded streets as dark without her
As Winter skies whose moon has passed away

This little gauntlet which her hand was clasping
Fell from her as she reached the carriage door,
And floated down, as flutters from the aspen
Some trembling leaflet whose brief day is o'er.

And I-I found it on the pavement lying.
Pale as the marble Venus' missing hand
Or some small flake of foam which Ocean. flying
Leaves in a furrow of the moistened sand.

She was so like some queen of the ideal-
With that bright brow, those soft eyes' shadowy gleam-
I fain would keep this pledge to prove her real,
To mark her difference from an airy dream.

And though her glove has unto me been donor
Of much sweet thought. yet I can think it well
That she should know as little of its owner
As I of her from whose fair hand it fell.

Why should I drag her from her high position.
Her niche above this work-day world's long reach?
Hardly a fact. nor wholly yet a vision
She joins for me the better part of each.