Classic Poem

A ROUND the fire, past midnight, when the girls
Were sleeping, let us hope their beauty-sleep,
In nests of delicate fragrance, there remained
Just two or three to smoke that last cigar
And taste the sweet o' the night Quoth one of us,
Knocking the white ash indolently off,
Lest it should fall upon his lounging-coat
Like sudden snow upon a purple moor,
" What was the best thing said to-night? " A flow
Of talk succeeded: one man's epigram
Another's pretty speech to Isabel,
The wild young poet's lyric oratory
Halfway twixt the Agora and Colney Hatch,
The impromptu in the style of Vivian Grey
About Disraeli — these and fifty more
The men discussed until discussion yawned
And the last seltzer quenched the last cigar,
And everybody went to bed. But I,
I knew full well the best thing said that night,
When she who wore the buds of cyclamen
Stood in the odorous twilight 'mid the flowers,
While a caressing spray of some white bloom
Over her rose-flusht shoulder fell. I knew,
And wrote it down on a Vitellian leaf —
A little tablet for love's lusive rhyme.
Who will, may read.

I

O darling eyelids' delicate droop!
O little sweet mouth, so red, so pure!
There in the twilight while I stoop,
Beautiful Amoret looks demure.
There's a word to whisper: who can guess?
Will it be No , sweet? Will it be Yes?

II

Listen the flowers that word to learn
Which the little sweet mouth must say to me;
Faintly it flutters the fairy fern:
What will it be? O what will it be?
Tender the gleam in those eyes of light
As she says the best thing said to-night!