Xv

This way, this way, Fifine! Here 's she, shall make my thoughts be surer what they mean! First let me read the signs, portray you past mistake The gypsy's foreign self, no swarth our sun could bake. Yet where 's a woolly trace degrades the wiry hair? And note the Greek-nymph nose, and--oh, my Hebrew pair Of eye and eye--o'erarched by velvet of the mole-- That swim as in a sea, that dip and rise and roll, Spilling the light around! While either ear is cut Thin as a dusk-leaved rose carved from a cocoanut. And then, her neck! now, grant you had the power to deck, Just as your fancy pleased, the bistre-length of neck, Could lay, to shine against its shade, a moonlike row Of pearls, each round and white as bubble Cupids blow Big out of mother's milk,--what pearl-moon would surpass That string of mock-turquoise, those almandines of glass, Where girlhood terminates? for with breasts'-birth commence The boy, and page-costume, till pink and impudence End admirably all: complete the creature trips Our way now, brings sunshine upon her spangled hips, As here she fronts us full, with pose half-frank, half-fierce!