The Tender Heart

She gazed upon the burnished brace
Of plump ruffed grouse he showed with pride
Angelic grief was in her face:
“How could you do it, dear?” she sighed.
“The poor, pathetic, moveless wings!
The songs all hushed—oh, cruel shame!”
Said he, “The partridge never sings.”
Said she, “The sin is quite the same.

“You men are savage through and through.
A boy is always bringing in
Some string of bird’s eggs, white and blue,
Or butterfly upon a pin.
The angle-worm in anguish dies,
Impaled, the pretty trout to tease⸺”
“My own, I fish for trout with flies⸺”
“Don’t wander from the question, please!”

She quoted Burns’s “Wounded Hare,”
And certain burning lines of Blake’s,
And Ruskin on the fowls of air,
And Coleridge on the water-snakes.
At Emerson’s “Forbearance” he
Began to feel his will benumbed;
At Browning’s “Donald” utterly
His soul surrendered and succumbed.

“Oh, gentlest of all gentle girls,”
He thought, “beneath the blessed sun!”
He saw her lashes hung with pearls,
And swore to give away his gun.
She smiled to find her point was gained,
And went, with happy parting words
(He subsequently ascertained),
To trim her hat with humming-birds.