10 Best Famous Paired Up Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Paired Up poems. This is a select list of the best famous Paired Up poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Paired Up poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of paired up poems.

• All Famous Paired Up Poems

 I.

I said---Then, dearest, since 'tis so,
Since now at length my fate I know,
Since nothing all my love avails,
Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,
Since this was written and needs must be---
My whole heart rises up to bless
Your name in pride and thankfulness!
Take back the hope you gave,---I claim
---Only a memory of the same,
---And this beside, if you will not blame,
Your leave for one more last ride with me.

II.

My mistress bent that brow of hers;
Those deep dark eyes where pride demurs
When pity would be softening through,
Fixed me, a breathing-while or two,
With life or death in the balance: right!
The blood replenished me again;
My last thought was at least not vain:
I and my mistress, side by side
Shall be together, breathe and ride,
So, one day more am I deified.
Who knows but the world may end tonight?

III.

Hush! if you saw some western cloud
All billowy-bosomed, over-bowed
By many benedictions---sun's
And moon's and evening-star's at once---
And so, you, looking and loving best,
Conscious grew, your passion drew
Cloud, sunset, moonrise, star-shine too,
Down on you, near and yet more near,
Till flesh must fade for heaven was here!---
Thus leant she and lingered---joy and fear!
Thus lay she a moment on my breast.

IV.

Then we began to ride. My soul
Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll
Freshening and fluttering in the wind.
Past hopes already lay behind.
What need to strive with a life awry?
Had I said that, had I done this,
So might I gain, so might I miss.
Might she have loved me? just as well
She might have hated, who can tell!
Where had I been now if the worst befell?
And here we are riding, she and I.

V.

Fail I alone, in words and deeds?
Why, all men strive and who succeeds?
We rode; it seemed my spirit flew,
Saw other regions, cities new,
As the world rushed by on either side. 
I thought,---All labour, yet no less
Bear up beneath their unsuccess.
Look at the end of work, contrast
The petty done, the undone vast,
This present of theirs with the hopeful past!
I hoped she would love me; here we ride.

VI.

What hand and brain went ever paired?
What heart alike conceived and dared?
What act proved all its thought had been?
What will but felt the fleshly screen?
We ride and I see her bosom heave. 
There's many a crown for who can reach,
Ten lines, a statesman's life in each!
The flag stuck on a heap of bones,
A soldier's doing! what atones?
They scratch his name on the Abbey-stones.
My riding is better, by their leave.

VII.

What does it all mean, poet? Well,
Your brains beat into rhythm, you tell
What we felt only; you expressed
You hold things beautiful the best,
And pace them in rhyme so, side by side.
'Tis something, nay 'tis much: but then,
Have you yourself what's best for men?
Are you---poor, sick, old ere your time---
Nearer one whit your own sublime
Than we who never have turned a rhyme?
Sing, riding's a joy! For me, I ride.

VIII.

And you, great sculptor---so, you gave
A score of years to Art, her slave,
And that's your Venus, whence we turn
To yonder girl that fords the burn!
You acquiesce, and shall I repine?
What, man of music, you grown grey
With notes and nothing else to say,
Is this your sole praise from a friend,
``Greatly his opera's strains intend,
``Put in music we know how fashions end!''
I gave my youth; but we ride, in fine.

IX.

Who knows what's fit for us? Had fate
Proposed bliss here should sublimate
My being---had I signed the bond---
Still one must lead some life beyond,
Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried. 
This foot once planted on the goal,
This glory-garland round my soul,
Could I descry such? Try and test!
I sink back shuddering from the quest. 
Earth being so good, would heaven seem best?
Now, heaven and she are beyond this ride.

X.

And yet---she has not spoke so long!
What if heaven be that, fair and strong
At life's best, with our eyes upturned
Whither life's flower is first discerned,
We, fixed so, ever should so abide?
What if we still ride on, we two
With life for ever old yet new,
Changed not in kind but in degree,
The instant made eternity,---
And heaven just prove that I and she
Ride, ride together, for ever ride?

 There were three in the meadow by the brook 
Gathering up windrows, piling cocks of hay, 
With an eye always lifted toward the west 
Where an irregular sun-bordered cloud 
Darkly advanced with a perpetual dagger 
Flickering across its bosom. Suddenly 
One helper, thrusting pitchfork in the ground, 
Marched himself off the field and home. One stayed. 
The town-bred farmer failed to understand. 
"What is there wrong?" 
"Something you just now said." 
"What did I say?" 
"About our taking pains." 
"To cock the hay?--because it's going to shower? 
I said that more than half an hour ago. 
I said it to myself as much as you." 
"You didn't know. But James is one big fool. 
He thought you meant to find fault with his work. 
That's what the average farmer would have meant. 
James would take time, of course, to chew it over 
Before he acted: he's just got round to act." 
"He is a fool if that's the way he takes me." 
"Don't let it bother you. You've found out something. 
The hand that knows his business won't be told 
To do work better or faster--those two things. 
I'm as particular as anyone: 
Most likely I'd have served you just the same. 
But I know you don't understand our ways. 
You were just talking what was in your mind, 
What was in all our minds, and you weren't hinting. 
Tell you a story of what happened once: 
I was up here in Salem at a man's 
Named Sanders with a gang of four or five 
Doing the haying. No one liked the boss. 
He was one of the kind sports call a spider, 
All wiry arms and legs that spread out wavy 
From a humped body nigh as big's a biscuit. 
But work! that man could work, especially 
If by so doing he could get more work 
Out of his hired help. I'm not denying 
He was hard on himself. I couldn't find 
That he kept any hours--not for himself. 
Daylight and lantern-light were one to him: 
I've heard him pounding in the barn all night. 
But what he liked was someone to encourage. 
Them that he couldn't lead he'd get behind 
And drive, the way you can, you know, in mowing-- 
Keep at their heels and threaten to mow their legs off. 
I'd seen about enough of his bulling tricks 
(We call that bulling). I'd been watching him. 
So when he paired off with me in the hayfield 
To load the load, thinks I, Look out for trouble. 
I built the load and topped it off; old Sanders 
Combed it down with a rake and says, 'O. K.' 
Everything went well till we reached the barn 
With a big catch to empty in a bay. 
You understand that meant the easy job 
For the man up on top of throwing down 
The hay and rolling it off wholesale, 
Where on a mow it would have been slow lifting. 
You wouldn't think a fellow'd need much urging 
Under these circumstances, would you now? 
But the old fool seizes his fork in both hands, 
And looking up bewhiskered out of the pit, 
Shouts like an army captain, 'Let her come!' 
Thinks I, D'ye mean it? 'What was that you said?' 
I asked out loud, so's there'd be no mistake, 
'Did you say, Let her come?' 'Yes, let her come.' 
He said it over, but he said it softer. 
Never you say a thing like that to a man, 
Not if he values what he is. God, I'd as soon 
Murdered him as left out his middle name. 
I'd built the load and knew right where to find it. 
Two or three forkfuls I picked lightly round for 
Like meditating, and then I just dug in 
And dumped the rackful on him in ten lots. 
I looked over the side once in the dust 
And caught sight of him treading-water-like, 
Keeping his head above. 'Damn ye,' I says, 
'That gets ye!' He squeaked like a squeezed rat. 
That was the last I saw or heard of him. 
I cleaned the rack and drove out to cool off. 
As I sat mopping hayseed from my neck, 
And sort of waiting to be asked about it, 
One of the boys sings out, 'Where's the old man?' 
'I left him in the barn under the hay. 
If ye want him, ye can go and dig him out.' 
They realized from the way I swobbed my neck 
More than was needed something must be up. 
They headed for the barn; I stayed where I was. 
They told me afterward. First they forked hay, 
A lot of it, out into the barn floor. 
Nothing! They listened for him. Not a rustle. 
I guess they thought I'd spiked him in the temple 
Before I buried him, or I couldn't have managed. 
They excavated more. 'Go keep his wife 
Out of the barn.' Someone looked in a window, 
And curse me if he wasn't in the kitchen 
Slumped way down in a chair, with both his feet 
Stuck in the oven, the hottest day that summer. 
He looked so clean disgusted from behind 
There was no one that dared to stir him up, 
Or let him know that he was being looked at. 
Apparently I hadn't buried him 
(I may have knocked him down); but my just trying 
To bury him had hurt his dignity. 
He had gone to the house so's not to meet me. 
He kept away from us all afternoon. 
We tended to his hay. We saw him out 
After a while picking peas in his garden: 
He couldn't keep away from doing something." 
"Weren't you relieved to find he wasn't dead?" 
"No! and yet I don't know--it's hard to say. 
I went about to kill him fair enough." 
"You took an awkward way. Did he discharge you?" 
"Discharge me? No! He knew I did just right."

 Requiring something lovely on his arm
Took me to Stamford, Connecticut, a quasi-farm,
His family's; later picking up the mammoth
Girlfriend of Charlie, meanwhile trying to pawn me off
On some third guy also up for the weekend.
But Saturday we still were paired; spent
It sprawled across that sprawling acreage
Until the grass grew limp
with damp. Like me. Johnston-baby, I can still see
The pelted clover, burrs' prickle fur and gorged
Pastures spewing infinite tiny bells. You pimp.

 I
Thy trivial harp will never please 
Or fill my craving ear; 
Its chords should ring as blows the breeze, 
Free, peremptory, clear. 
No jingling serenader's art, 
Nor tinkle of piano strings, 
Can make the wild blood start 
In its mystic springs. 
The kingly bard 
Must smile the chords rudely and hard, 
As with hammer or with mace; 
That they may render back 
Artful thunder, which conveys 
Secrets of the solar track, 
Sparks of the supersolar blaze. 
Merlin's blows are strokes of fate, 
Chiming with the forest tone, 
When boughs buffet boughs in the wood; 
Chiming with the gasp and moan 
Of the ice-imprisoned hood; 
With the pulse of manly hearts; 
With the voice of orators; 
With the din of city arts; 
With the cannonade of wars; 
With the marches of the brave; 
And prayers of might from martyrs' cave.

Great is the art, 
Great be the manners, of the bard. 
He shall not his brain encumber 
With the coil of rhythm and number; 
But, leaving rule and pale forethought, 
He shall aye climb 
For his rhyme. 
"Pass in, pass in," the angels say, 
"In to the upper doors, 
Nor count compartments of the floors, 
But mount to paradise 
By the stairway of surprise." 

Blameless master of the games, 
King of sport that never shames, 
He shall daily joy dispense 
Hid in song's sweet influence. 
Forms more cheerly live and go, 
What time the subtle mind 
Sings aloud the tune whereto 
Their pulses beat, 
And march their feet, 
And their members are combined. 

By Sybarites beguiled, 
He shall no task decline; 
Merlin's mighty line 
Extremes of nature reconciled, 
Bereaved a tyrant of his will, 
And made the lion mild. 
Songs can the tempest still, 
Scattered on the stormy air, 
Mold the year to fair increase, 
And bring in poetic peace. 
He shall nor seek to weave, 
In weak, unhappy times, 
Efficacious rhymes; 
Wait his returning strength. 
Bird that from the nadir's floor 
To the zenith's top can soar, 
The roaring orbit of the muse exceeds that journey's length. 
Nor profane affect to hit 
Or compass that, by meddling wit, 
Which only the propitious mind 
Publishes when 'tis inclined. 
There are open hours 
When the God's will sallies free, 
And the dull idiot might see 
The flowing fortunes of a thousand years; 
Sudden, at unawares, 
Self-moved, fly-to the doors, 
Nor sword of angels could reveal 
What they conceal. 

II
The rhyme of the poet 
Modulates the king's affairs; 
Balance-loving Nature 
Made all things in pairs. 
To every foot its antipode; 
Each color with its counter glowed: 
To every tone beat answering tones, 
Higher or graver; 
Flavor gladly blends with flavor; 
Leaf answers leaf upon the bough; 
And match the paired cotyledons. 
Hands to hands, and feet to feet, 
In one body grooms and brides; 
Eldest rite, two married sides 
In every mortal meet. 
Light's far furnace shines, 
Smelting balls and bars, 
Forging double stars, 
Glittering twins and trines. 
The animals are sick with love, 
Lovesick with rhyme; 
Each with all propitious Time 
Into chorus wove. 

Like the dancers' ordered band, 
Thoughts come also hand in hand; 
In equal couples mated, 
Or else alternated; 
Adding by their mutual gage, 
One to other, health and age. 
Solitary fancies go 
Short-lived wandering to and ire, 
Most like to bachelors, 
Or an ungiven maid, 
Nor ancestors, 
With no posterity to make the lie afraid, 
Or keep truth undecayed. 
Perfect-paired as eagle's wings, 
Justice is the rhyme of things; 
Trade and counting use 
The self-same tuneful muse; 
And Nemesis, 
Who with even matches odd, 
Who athwart space redresses 
The partial wrong, 
Fills the just period, 
And finishes the song. 

Subtle rhymes, with ruin rife 
Murmur in the hour of life, 
Sung by the Sisters as they spin; 
In perfect time and measure they 
Build and unbuild our echoing clay. 
As the two twilights of the day 
Fold us music-drunken in.

 Inside Ayers Rock is lit
with paired fluorescent lights
on steel pillars supporting the ceiling
of haze-blue marquee cloth
high above the non-slip pavers.
Curving around the cafeteria
throughout vast inner space
is a Milky way of plastic chairs
in foursomes around tables
all the way to the truck drivers' enclave.
Dusted coolabah trees grow to the ceiling,
TVs talk in gassy colours, and
round the walls are Outback shop fronts:
the Beehive Bookshop for brochures,
Casual Clobber, the bottled Country Kitchen
and the sheet-iron Dreamtime Experience
that is turned off at night.
A high bank of medal-ribbony
lolly jars preside over
island counters like opened crates,
one labelled White Mugs, and covered with them.
A two-dimensional policeman
discourages shoplifting of gifts
and near the entrance, where you pay
for fuel, there stands a tribal man
in rib-paint and pubic tassel.
It is all gentle and kind.
In beyond the children's playworld
there are fossils, like crumpled
old drawings of creatures in rock.

 After Li Po

While my hair was still cut straight 
 across my forehead
I played at the front gate, pulling
 flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing
 horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with
 blue plums. 
And we went on living in the village of 
 Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or 
 suspicion. 

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never
 looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling, 
I desired my dust to be mingled with
 yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river
 of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise 
 overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went 
 out,
By the gate now, the moss is grown, 
 the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in 
 wind.
The paired butterflies are already 
 yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the
 narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
 As far as Cho-fu-sa.

 Here Jack and Tom are paired with Moll and Meg. 
Curved open to the river-reach is seen 
A country merry-making on the green. 
Fair space for signal shakings of the leg. 
That little screwy fiddler from his booth, 
Whence flows one nut-brown stream, commands the joints 
Of all who caper here at various points. 
I have known rustic revels in my youth: 
The May-fly pleasures of a mind at ease. 
An early goddess was a county lass: 
A charmed Amphion-oak she tripped the grass. 
What life was that I lived? The life of these? 
Heaven keep them happy! Nature they seem near. 
They must, I think, be wiser than I am; 
They have the secret of the bull and lamb. 
'Tis true that when we trace its source, 'tis beer.

 The rhyme of the poet
Modulates the king's affairs,
Balance-loving nature
Made all things in pairs.
To every foot its antipode,
Each color with its counter glowed,
To every tone beat answering tones,
Higher or graver;
Flavor gladly blends with flavor;
Leaf answers leaf upon the bough,
And match the paired cotyledons.
Hands to hands, and feet to feet,
In one body grooms and brides;
Eldest rite, two married sides
In every mortal meet.
Light's far furnace shines,
Smelting balls and bars,
Forging double stars,
Glittering twins and trines.
The animals are sick with love,
Lovesick with rhyme;
Each with all propitious Time
Into chorus wove.

Like the dancers' ordered band,
Thoughts come also hand in hand,
In equal couples mated,
Or else alternated,
Adding by their mutual gage
One to other health and age.
Solitary fancies go
Short-lived wandering to and fro,
Most like to bachelors,
Or an ungiven maid,
Not ancestors,
With no posterity to make the lie afraid,
Or keep truth undecayed.

Perfect paired as eagle's wings,
Justice is the rhyme of things;
Trade and counting use
The serf-same tuneful muse;
And Nemesis,
Who with even matches odd,
Who athwart space redresses
The partial wrong,
Fills the just period,
And finishes the song.

Subtle rhymes with ruin rife
Murmur in the house of life,
Sung by the Sisters as they spin;
In perfect time and measure, they
Build and unbuild our echoing clay,
As the two twilights of the day
Fold us music-drunken in.

ZONE 


In the end you are tired of this ancient world 
Shepherd oh Eiffel Tower the herd of bridges is bleating this morning 

You've had enough of living in Greek and Roman antiquity 

Here even the cars look antique 
Only religion has stayed new religion 
Has stayed simple like the hangars at Port-Aviation 

You alone in Europe are not ancient oh Christianity 
The most modern European is you Pope Pius X 
And shame keeps you whom the windows are watching 
From entering a church and going to confession this morning 
You read the flyers catalogues posters that shout out 
There's the morning's poetry and as for prose there are the newspapers 
There are 25 cent tabloids full of crimes 
Celebrity items and a thousand different headlines 

This morning I saw a pretty street whose name I forget 
New and clean it was the sun's herald 
Executives workers and beautiful stenos 
Cross it four times a day from Monday morning to Saturday evening 
In the morning the siren moans three times 
An angry bell barks at noon 
The inscriptions on the signs and walls 
The billboards the notices squawk like parrots 
I love the charm of this industrial street 
In Paris between the Rue Aumont-Thiéville and the Avenue des Ternes 

There's the young street and you're still just a little boy 
Your mother dresses you only in blue and white 
You're very pious and along with your oldest friend René Dalize 
You like nothing better than the rituals of the Church 
It is nine o'clock the gas is low and blue you sneak out of the dormitory 
You pray all night in the school's chapel 
While in eternal adorable amethyst depths 
The flaming glory of Christ revolves forever 
It's the beautiful lily we all cultivate 
It's the torch with red hair the wind can't blow out 
It's the pale rosy son of the grieving mother 
It's the tree always leafy with prayers 
It's the paired gallows of honor and eternity 
It's the star with six branches 
It's God who dies on Friday and comes back to life on Sunday 
It's Christ who climbs to the sky better than any pilot 
He holds the world record for altitude 

Apple Christ of the eye 
Twentieth pupil of the centuries he knows how to do it 
And changed into a bird this century like Jesus climbs into the air 
Devils in their depths raise their heads to look at him 
They say he's copying Simon Magus in Judea 
They shout if he's so good at flying let's call him a fugitive 
Angels gyre around the handsome gymnast 
Icarus Enoch Elijah Apollonius of Tyana 
Hover around the first airplane 
They scatter sometimes to let the ones carrying the Eucharist pass 
Those priests that are forever ascending carrying the host 
Finally the plane lands without folding its wings 
And the sky is full of millions of swallows 
Crows falcons owls come in full flight 
Ibises flamingos storks come from Africa 
The Roc Bird made famous by storytellers and poets 
Soars holding in its claws Adam's skull the first head 
The eagle swoops screaming from the horizon 
And from America the little hummingbird comes 
From China the long agile peehees have come 
They have only one wing and fly in pairs 
Now here's the dove immaculate spirit 
Escorted by the lyre-bird and the spotted peacock 
The phoenix that self-engendering pyre 
For an instant hides all with its burning ash 
Sirens leaving the dangerous straits 
Arrive singing beautifully all three 
And all eagle phoenix peehees from China 
Hang out with the flying Machine 

Now you're walking in Paris all alone in the crowd 
Herds of buses amble by you mooing 
The anguish of love tightens your throat 
As if you were never going to be loved again 
If you lived in the old days you would enter a monastery 
You are ashamed when you catch yourself saying a prayer 
You make fun of yourself and your laughter crackles like the fire of Hell 
The sparks of your laughter gild the abyss of your life 
It is a painting hung in a dark museum 
And sometimes you go look at it close up 

Today you're walking in Paris the women have turned blood-red 
It was and I wish I didn't remember it was at the waning of beauty 
Surrounded by fervent flames Our Lady looked at me in Chartres 
The blood of your Sacred Heart drenched me in Montmartre 
I am sick from hearing blissful phrases 
The love I suffer from is a shameful sickness 
And the image that possesses you makes you survive in insomnia and anguish 
It is always near you this image that passes 

Now you're on the shores of the Mediterranean 
Under the lemon trees that are in flower all year long 
You go boating with some friends 
One is from Nice there's one from Menton and two from La Turbie 
We look with dread at the octopus of the deep 
And among the seaweed fish are swimming symbols of the Savior 

You are in the garden of an inn just outside of Prague 
You feel so happy a rose is on the table 
And you observe instead of writing your story in prose 
The Japanese beetle sleeping in the heart of the rose 

Terrified you see yourself drawn in the agates of Saint Vitus 
You were sad enough to die the day you saw yourself 
You look like Lazarus thrown into a panic by the daylight 
The hands on the clock in the Jewish district go counter-clockwise 
And you too are going slowly backwards in your life 
Climbing up to Hradcany and listening at night 
To Czech songs being sung in taverns 

Here you are in Marseilles in the middle of watermelons 

Here you are in Coblenz at the Giant Hotel 

Here you are in Rome sitting under a Japanese medlar tree 

Here you are in Amsterdam with a young woman you think is beautiful she is ugly 
She is engaged to a student from Leyden 
There they rent rooms in Latin Cubicula Locanda 
I remember I spent three days there and just as many in Gouda 

You are in Paris getting interrogated 
They're arresting you like a criminal 

You made some miserable and happy journeys 
Before you became aware of lies and of age 
You suffered from love at twenty and at thirty 
I've lived like a madman and I've wasted my time 
You don't dare look at your hands anymore and all the time I want to cry 
Over you over the women I love over everything that's terrified you 

Your tear-filled eyes watch the poor emigrants 
They believe in God they pray the women breast-feed the children 
They fill the waiting-room at the St. Lazaire station with their smell 
They have faith in their star like the Magi 
They hope to earn money in Argentina 
And go back to their country after making their fortune 
One family is carrying a red eiderdown the way you carry your heart 
The eiderdown and our dreams are equally unreal 
Some of these emigrants stay here and put up at the 
Rue des Rosiers or the Rue des Ecouffes in hovels 
I've seen them often at night they're out for a breath of air in the street 
And like chess pieces they rarely move 
They are mostly Jews the wives wearing wigs 
Sit still bloodless at the back of store-fronts 

You're standing in front of the counter at a sleazy bar 
You're having coffee for two sous with the down-and-out 

At night you're in a big restaurant 

These women aren't mean but they do have their troubles 
All of them even the ugliest has made her lover suffer 

She is a Jersey policeman's daughter 

Her hands that I hadn't seen are hard and chapped 

I feel immense pity for the scars on her belly 

I humble my mouth now to a poor hooker with a horrible laugh 

You are alone morning is approaching 
Milkmen clink their cans in the streets 

Night withdraws like a half-caste beauty 
Ferdine the false or thoughtful Leah 

And you drink this alcohol burning like your life 
Your life that you drink like an eau-de-vie 

You walk towards Auteuil you want to go home on foot 
To sleep surrounded by your fetishes from the South Seas and from Guinea 
They are Christs in another form and from a different creed 
They are lower Christs of dim expectations 

Goodbye Goodbye 

Sun neck cut 

  


from Alcools, 1913 

Translation copyright Charlotte Mandell 

 OH, Prue she has a patient man,
And Joan a gentle lover,
And Agatha's Arth' is a hug-the-hearth,­
But my true love's a rover! 

Mig, her man's as good as cheese
And honest as a briar,
Sue tells her love what he's thinking of,­
But my dear lad's a liar! 

Oh, Sue and Prue and Agatha
Are thick with Mig and Joan!
They bite their threads and shake their heads
And gnaw my name like a bone; 

And Prue says, "Mine's a patient man,
As never snaps me up," 
And Agatha, "Arth' is a hug-the-hearth,
Could live content in a cup," 

Sue's man's mind is like good jell­
All one color, and clear­
And Mig's no call to think at all
What's to come next year, 

While Joan makes boast of a gentle lad,
That's troubled with that and this;­
But they all would give the life they live
For a look from the man I kiss! 

Cold he slants his eyes about,
And few enough's his choice,­
Though he'd slip me clean for a nun, or a queen,
Or a beggar with knots in her voice,­ 

And Agatha will turn awake
While her good man sleeps sound,
And Mig and Sue and Joan and Prue
Will hear the clock strike round, 

For Prue she has a patient man,
As asks not when or why, 
And Mig and Sue have naught to do
But peep who's passing by, 

Joan is paired with a putterer
That bastes and tastes and salts,
And Agatha's Arth' is a hug-the-hearth,­
But my true love is false!