AN EPISTLE TO FANNY.
Reading edition
———
BY PARK BENJAMIN.
———
Sweet Fanny, though I know you not,
And I have never seen the splendor
That flashes from your hazel eyes
To make the souls of men surrender;
Though, when they ask me how you look,
I’m forced to say “I never met her,”
I hope you will not deem it wrong
If I address to you a letter.
Here in mine own secluded room,
Forgetful of life’s sober duty,
Lapped in the stillness of repose,
I sit and muse and dream of beauty;
I picture all that’s fair and bright
Which poets sometimes call Elysian,
And, ’mid the shapes that round me throng,
Behold one soft, enchanting vision.
A lady—lovely as the morn
When Night her starry mansion closes,
And gentle winds with fairy feet
Toss the sweet dew from blushing roses—
A lady—to whose lip and cheek
Some twenty summer suns have given
Colors as rich as those that melt
Along the evening clouds of Heaven.
Her stature tall, her tresses dark,
Her brow like light in ambush lying,
Her hand—the very hand I’d give
The world to clasp if I were dying!
Her eyes, the glowing types of love,
Upon the heart they print their meaning—
How mild they shine as o’er them fall
Those lashes long their lustre screening!
Sweet Fanny, can you not divine
The form that floats before my dreaming,
And whose the pictured smiles I see
This moment on my canvass beaming?
You cannot! then I’ve failed indeed,
To paint a single look I cherish—
So, you may cast my lines aside,
And bid them like my memory perish.
My memory! what am I to thee,
Oh purest, gentlest, fairest, dearest!
Yes, dearest, though thy glance be cold
When first my humble name thou hearest.
Though I am nothing, thou to me
Art Fancy’s best beloved ideal;
And well I know the form she paints
Is far less charming than the real.