Classic Poem

WHO RALLIED HIM FOR PRAISING BLUE EYES IN HIS VERSES

If sometimes, in a random phrase
(For variation in my ditty),
I chance blue eyes, or grey, to praise
And seem to intimate them pretty —

It is because I do not dare
With too unmixed reiteration
To sing the browner eyes and hair
That are my true intoxication.

Know, then, that I consider brown
For ladies' eyes, the only colour;
And deem all other orbs in town
(Compared to yours), opaquer, duller.

I pray, perpend, my dearest dear;
While blue-eyed maids the praise were drinking,
How insubstantial was their cheer —
It was of yours that I was thinking!