My Fair-Haired Pet

Sweet Elise is very fair,
     Very fair and very sweet.
With a wealth of sunny hair
     Touched with lights and shdows fleet;
Nothing red nor golden in it,
     Just a soft elusive hue,
     Like the moonbeams filtered through
A thin cloud that every minute
     Seems dissolved and born anew.
Round her neck the tresses stray,
     Haloing a head that paints
     More a cherub than a saint’s
Misty tresses every way
     Blown by her incessant motion,
As the crested ripples play
     Round a rock of sleeping ocean
That scarce breaks them into spray.

White as lilies, pink as roses,
     Clear as alabaster vases
In the sunlight, her round face is
Where a tender bloom reposes
     In the light of nameless graces.
And her nostrils, curved and thin,
     Through their slender arches show
Tintings of the life within,
     Flushing from the heart below.
By their curdling and dilating
In the emotional quick beating
     Of that heart, we learn to know
     How her feelings come and go;
But we may not so discover
     With what tenderness they glow
For her gray old Poet Lover!
Clinging arms and nestling don
     Snugly in his frosted fell,
Mingling with her sunny brown
     His gray mist, can sweetly tell
Where her winged affections hover,
     And, alighting, love to dwell.
This he reads as well, moreover,
     In the blue depth of her eyes,
Where the smile, ere yet it slips
O’er the rose-bud of her lips,
     Seems from inner wells to rise,
     Like the light in morning skies
While the hills the vale eclipse.
And those lips! how sweetly trips
     Their sweet meaning forth to greet
     Kindred utterance as sweet;
Mute or vocal they express
The same simple loveliness.

And her tongue has speech withal
     With a mellow music in it,
Artless cadences that fall
On the pleased ear, and recall
     Every tone that e’er could win it
To glad listening, grave or gay,
Bird or breeze or wavelet’s play:
     Now she twitters like a linnet
When it hails the break of day;
     Now with wooing
     Softness cooing
     Mock’s the ring-dove’s roundelay
And again like rills that tinkle
     Down the green rocks into pools
That the summer breezes wrinkle
With low laughter, on their way;
But there is no bird in bush
Wren or bobolink or thrush
     And no brook the green moss cools
Has such dainty things to say
Ha! my fairy six-years lover,
Thou canst very well discover
True love never groweth gray!