| Poems by Women |
A Lady
You are beautiful and faded
Like an old opera
tune
Played upon a harpsichord;
Or like the sun-flooded silks
Of an
eighteenth-century boudoir.
In your eyes
Smoulder the fallen roses of
out-lived minutes,
And the perfume of your soul
Is vague and
suffusing,
With the pungence of sealed spice-jars.
Your half-tones delight
me,
And I grow mad with gazing
At your blent colours.
My vigour is a new-minted penny,
Which I cast at your feet.
Gather it
up from the dust,
That its sparkle may amuse you.
From: Rittenhouse, Jessie B.
The Second Book of Modern Verse (1919).
This poet:
[Author index]
This collection assembled by Jone Johnson Lewis.
Collection © 1999-2002 Jone Johnson Lewis.
Citing poems from these pages:
| Author. "Poem Title." Women's History: Poems by Women. Jone Johnson Lewis, editor. URL: (date of logon) |

