Classic Poem

You ask me, Lydia, ‘whether I,
If you refuse my suit, shall die.’
 (Now pray don't let this hurt you!)
Although the time be out of joint,
I should not think a bodkin's point
 The sole resource of virtue;
Nor shall I, though your mood endure,
Attempt a final Water-cure
 Except against my wishes;
For I respectfully decline
To dignify the Serpentine,
 And make hors-d'a'uvres for fishes;
But if you ask me whether I
 Composedly can go,
Without a look, without a sigh,
 Why, then I answer—No.

‘You are assured,’ you sadly say
(If in this most considerate way
 To treat my suit your will is),
That I shall ‘quickly find as fair
Some new Neæra's tangled hair—
 Some easier Amaryllis.’
I cannot promise to be cold
If smiles are kind as yours of old
 On lips of later beauties;
Nor can I, if I would, forget
The homage that is Nature's debt,
 While man has social duties;
But if you ask shall I prefer
 To you I honour so,
A somewhat visionary Her,
 I answer truly—No.

You fear, you frankly add, ‘to find
In me too late the altered mind
 That altering Time estranges.’
To this I make response that we
(As physiologists agree)
 Must have septennial changes;
This is a thing beyond control,
And it were best upon the whole
 To try and find out whether
We could not, by some means, arrange
This not-to-be-avoided change
 So as to change together:
But, had you asked me to allow
 That you could ever grow
Less amiable than you are now,—
 Emphatically—No.

But—to be serious—if you care
To know how I shall really bear
 This much-discussed rejection,
I answer you. As feeling men
Behave, in best romances, when
 You outrage their affection;—
With that gesticulatory woe,
By which, as melodramas show,
 Despair is indicated;
Enforced by all the liquid grief
Which hugest pocket-handkerchief
 Has ever simulated;
And when, arrived so far, you say
 In tragic accents ‘Go,’
Then, Lydia, then…I still shall stay,
 And firmly answer—No.