To Mary Pickford

 MOVING-PICTURE ACTRESS

(On hearing she was leaving the moving-pictures for the stage.
)


Mary Pickford, doll divine,
Year by year, and every day
At the movmg-picture play,
You have been my valentine.


Once a free-limbed page in hose,
Baby-Rosalind in flower,
Cloakless, shrinking, in that hour
How our reverent passion rose,
How our fine desire you won.

Kitchen-wench another day,
Shapeless, wooden every way.

Next, a fairy from the sun.


Once you walked a grown-up strand
Fish-wife siren, full of lure,
Snaring with devices sure
Lads who murdered on the sand.

But on most days just a child
Dimpled as no grown-folk are,
Cold of kiss as some north star,
Violet from the valleys wild.

Snared as innocence must be,
Fleeing, prisoned, chained, half-dead—
At the end of tortures dread
Roaring Cowboys set you free.


Fly, O song, to her to-day, 
Like a cowboy cross the land.
 
Snatch her from Belasco's hand 
And that prison called Broadway.
 

All the village swains await
One dear lily-girl demure,
Saucy, dancing, cold and pure, 
Elf who must return in state.

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