AT THE NEXT TABLE

O, Lady like a tea-cup,

A flower, or a fan,

What dear, archaic fancy

Devised you as it ran

Through gone Arcadian summers

Of sweet and gentle airs,

Of roses at the casement,

And slippers on the stairs?

O, Lady like a poem

Out of the olden time,

Be now the fading pattern

Of this archaic rhyme.