Didst thou not praise me, Gaultier, at the hall,
Ripe lips, trim boddice, and a waist so small,
With clipsome lightness, dwindling ever less,
Beneath the robe of pea-y greeniness?

Dost thou remember, when, with stately prance,
Our heads went crosswise in the country-dance;
How soft, warm fingers, tipped like "buds of balm,
Trembled within the squeezing of thy palm;
And how a cheek grew flushed and peachy-wise
At the frank lifting of thy cordial eyes?

Ah, me! that night there was one gentle thing,
Who, like a dove, with its scarce feathered wing,
Fluttered at the approach of thy quaint swaggering!

There's wont to be, at conscious times like these,
An affectation of a bright-eyed ease,—
A crispy cheekiness, if so I dare
Describe the swaling of a jaunty air;

And thus, when swirling from the waltz's wheel,
You craved my hand to grace the next quadrille,
That smiling voice, although it made me start,
Boiled in the meek o'erlifting of my heart;.
And, picking at my flowers, I said, with free
And usual tone, "O yes, sir, certainly!"

Like one that swoons, 'twixt sweet amaze and fear,
I heard the music burning in my ear,
And felt I cared not, so thou wert with me,
If Gurth or Wamba were our vis-À-vis.

So, when a tall Knight Templar ringing came,
And took his place amongst us with his dame,
I neither turned away, nor bashful shrunk
From the stern survey of the soldier-monk,
Though, rather more than three full quarters drunk;
But, threading through the figure, first in rule,
I paused to see thee plunge into La Poule.

Ah, what a sight was that! Not prurient Mars,
Pointing his toe through ten celestial bars—
Not young Apollo, beamily arrayed
In tripsome guise for Juno's masquerade—

Not smartest Hermes, with his pinion girth,
Jerking with freaks and snatches down to earth,
Looked half so bold, so beautiful, and strong,
As thou, when pranking through the glittering throng!
How the calmed ladies looked with eyes of love
On thy trim velvet doublet laced above;
The hem of gold, that, like a wavy river,
Flowed down into thy back with glancing shiver!
So bare was thy fine throat, and curls of black,
So lightsomely dropped in thy lordly back,
So crisply swaled the feather in thy bonnet,
So glanced thy thigh, and spanning palm upon it,
That my weak soul took instant flight to thee,
Lost in the fondest gush of that sweet witchery!

But when the dance was o'er, and arm in arm
(The full heart beating 'gainst the elbow warm)
We passed into the great refreshment-hall,
Where the heaped cheese-cakes and the comfits small
Lay, like a hive of sunbeams, brought to burn
Around the margin of the negus urn;
When my poor quivering hand you fingered twice,
And, with inquiring accents, whispered "Ice,
Water, or cream?" I could no more dissemble,
But dropped upon the couch all in a tremble.
A swimming faintness misted o'er my brain,
The corks seemed starting from the brisk champagne,
The custards fell untouched upon the floor,
Thine eyes met mine. That night we danced no more!