Classic Poem

Her cheeks were Roman roses, and her deep, Italian eyes
Were dark as limpid Como when the moon begins to rise;
A crimson 'kerchief crowned the silken midnight of her hair;
Her buxom little bodice was a heart-alluring snare;
A laughing little, daffing little, merry gipsy queen,
She challenged forth your pennies with her tinkling tambourine.
What pocketbook resisted when her organ sang the woe
Of Marguerite or Lucia, or the fun of Figaro!
What pulse but leaped the faster at the strains of " Pinafore "
And swinging, Old World waltzes that the ball-room hears no more!
So, hailed by children's laughter and the pat of childish feet,
The Organ-Grinder Lady came in music down the street.

With trundle-wheel and trumpet and the clamor of his clan,
Along the flinty pavement came the Scissors-Grinder Man, —
A yellow-headed laddie, and his cheeks were as the wine,
His eyes as blue and dancing as the water of the Rhine.
He trolled a Saxon ballad as he ground the shearing steel,
Delighting gaping urchins with the sparkles of the wheel;
And pleasantly and mirthfully he bobbed his head, to greet
The Organ-Grinder Lady as she halted in the street;
Then, since there's lack of honesty in being over-prim,
That Organ-Grinder Lady nodded blithely back at him.
He set his wheel a-humming, by the way of serenade;
She let her organ answer — and the " Wedding March " it played!

Belike a roll of magic ran around the music-reel;
Perchance the dainty bodice caught a sparkle from the wheel;
For, when the streets were twinkling with the lights of eventide,
The organ and the trundle-wheel rolled slowly, side by side,
Until, along the river where the great ships come to land,
The Lady and the Laddie watched the starlight, hand in hand.
And now in wedding-jacket and a black and scarlet gown,
They trudge their rounds together through the mazes of the town.
She makes his toil the lighter with the organ's mellow peal;
He makes the street the brighter with the sparkles of the wheel;
And thus they give each other and their world the best they can —
The Organ-Grinder Lady and the Scissors-Grinder Man.