TO HIS BROWN-EYED MISTRESS

If sometimes, in a random phrase

( For variation in my ditty ),

I chance blue eyes, or gray, 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 color;

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!