By Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr.
WERE you to come,
With your clear, gray eyes
As calmly placid as, in summer’s heat,
At noontide lie the sultry skies;
With your dark, brown hair
As smoothly quiet as the leaves
When stirs no cooling breath of air;
And shorn of smile, your full, red lips
Prest firmly close as the chaliced bud,
Before the nectar-quaffing bee ere sips;
I would not know you.
I would not love you.
But should you come
With your love-bright eyes
Dancing gaily as, on summer’s eve,
The stars adown the Western skies;
With your hair, wind-caught
And circled round your shining face
In fashion which no hand ere wrought;
And your full, red lips poised saucily,
As the slender moon midst an hundred stars,
And held aloof in daring taunt to me,
Then I would know you,
Then I would love you.