ISABEL NYE

WHEN autumn flowers were rich in bloom
And ripe fruit reddened against the sky,
Through the latticed door of a maiden's room,
The Devil came purring to Isabel Nye.

Isabel Nye with her sun-bright face,
Her midnight hair, and her sloe-black eye.
Goodness, and beauty, and maiden grace,
Were lavished and laid on Isabel Nye.

And she had suitors who sued, for gold;
And lovers, who wooed for love—or lust.
But he who won her was hard and cold,
And he trailed her soul in the very dust.

What though my hair was a trifle gray?
I loved her better and more than all
I worshiped her on her queenly way,
And her fall, to me, was an angel's fall.

Man glides to the ground by slow degrees,
Halting and hitching at wrong or right.
But woman glissades, with fearful ease,
Like a shooting star on a wintry night.

Ah, Isabel Nye, the winds go by;
The beard o’ the thistle sail's out to sea,
And the loves of old that were like tried gold
Have gone with the thistle-down—far a-lee.