Edward Cracroft Lefroy: His Life and Poems including a Reprint of Echoes from Theocritus: By Wilfred Austin Gill: With a Critical Estimate of the Sonnets by the late John Addington Symonds |
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TO A MAIDEN WHO WISHES TO
DRESS A LA MODE |
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 | Edward Cracroft Lefroy: His Life and Poems |  |
154
TO A MAIDEN WHO WISHES TO DRESS A LA MODE
O let me love thee as thou art,
Not as thou mayest be,
If twenty toilet-tricks impart
A fancied grace to thee.
So many simple charms are blent
Beneath that witching eye,
The soul that is not thus content
Is hard to satisfy.
Not as thou mayest be,
If twenty toilet-tricks impart
A fancied grace to thee.
So many simple charms are blent
Beneath that witching eye,
The soul that is not thus content
Is hard to satisfy.
And wherefore try such doubtful ways?
What dost thou seek to gain?
To bind a lover in whose gaze
Each other maid is plain?
If all the nymphs of Gaul combine
To deck thee with their store,
My heart's already wholly thine,
I cannot give thee more.
What dost thou seek to gain?
To bind a lover in whose gaze
Each other maid is plain?
If all the nymphs of Gaul combine
To deck thee with their store,
My heart's already wholly thine,
I cannot give thee more.
Then ever leave such borrowed plumes
To birds that doubt their own,
Assured that she is blest who blooms
With nature's grace alone.
Thou least of all hast need to boast
A loveliness suborned;
The beauty which entrances most
Is beauty unadorned.
To birds that doubt their own,
Assured that she is blest who blooms
With nature's grace alone.
Thou least of all hast need to boast
A loveliness suborned;
The beauty which entrances most
Is beauty unadorned.
October 1876.
| Edward Cracroft Lefroy: His Life and Poems | |