To Fanny

FANNY, it’s my belief
You’re the work of a witch and a thief!

Not such a witch as revealed his doom in the war
To the king, by the ghost, in the dwelling at hilled En Dor;
Or stalked in Thrace, wrinkled, austere, acerb,
With brazen sickle cropping the moonlit herb ;
Nor she, against the abyss of the night descried,
Throned on the ragged rock on the mountain-side,-
The invoker of carnage, black, with fire-eyed glare,
Grand in the depths of the livid and trembling air.

Not such a witch as dragged o’er the ridges of slain,
The corpse with her hook on the moaning Pharsalian plain,
And under the lateral jags of the gloomful yew,
By the hell-deep cave, its spirit from Acheron drew ;
Nor the woman of Thessaly, crouched in the crumbling tomb,
Decrepit, leathern, red in the embers’ bloom,
Wreathed with the coiling smoke of smouldering moly,
Hyssop, and vervain, mumbling spells unholy ;
Nor Canidia, lit by the Colchian perfumes’ flare,
The bristle of wild snakes stirring her terrible hair;
Nor fell Medea, that, borne by dragons of fire,
Fled through the air from the sword of the childless sire; Nor the triad, withered and weird, that showed Macbeth,
The sinister doubles of toil and trouble and death ;
Nor the hag of the wood, disproportionate, tall as a lance,
That, rancorous, duskily gnashing, with basilisk glance,
And white mane stiffening, spired, in her rose-silk garb,
O’er the steel-bright knight, aghast on his plunging barb.

Not like the camleted beldame, tittering low
In the night-black hut by the brazier’s sanguine glow,
Roasting the waxen mannikin − gruesome thing ! −
Whose wasting wasted the marrow and flesh of the king ;
Nor with crooked stick and conical hat, the crone,
Red-cloaked at dusk in the haunted dell alone ;
Nor she that to Faust and malign Mephisto came
Down the chimney yelling, scorched by the roaring flame;
Nor any that went into Mohra’s lonely field,
And shrill to Satan in stormy chorus pealed,
Come, antecessor, to Blockula bear thy load,
And on goat or spit, to the revel of devils rode;
Nor any that raced to the Brocken’s lurid brow,
In tempest and streaming song on a howling sow;
Or scurried aloft on a broomstick, weaving ills,
In the evil night o’er the dark New England hills.

Not such as these : behold, they loom,
Terraced in sullen lights on a Rembrandt gloom,−
Phantoms of awful age and terror and pain and bane, −
Vague and vast, a background of the night, −
All for a point of glittering rosy light,−
All to project my witch of delicatesse, −
Sweet sylph shape of star-eyed prettiness,
And beauty-teeming brain ! −
All to relieve one little witch-queen of May, −
A spirit of gay and gentle hours ;
Next of blood to planets and flowers
The odor and the ray.
A witch, be it understood,
Funny and fair and good,
Tiny and pretty and jolly;
A love, a sweet, a prize, a pet,
An airy, fairy dandizette,
A maid of honor to Cupid god,
A fairy girl of the period,
A wee little lady of delicate breeding,
Foreign to horror and melancholy,
And guiltless of any uncanny proceeding.
Fond, be sure, of the latest fashion ;
Silks and laces and gems her passion;
Fond as well of the flower-bright lawn,
Blue-bird, spring-time, star, and dawn.

Never clothed in the monstrous rags
Or ponderous robes of the witches and hags ;
Never a haunter of forest glooms,
Moon-weird fields, or caves, or tombs,
Or sharer in any Walpurgis revels
On midnight mounts with the Devil or devils.
Not addicted to such diversion ;
And never, O never, on any excursion,-
Never known to ride on a pig ; −
Unless it was one that had not grown big:
For a sweet little pig with a tendril tail,
Smooth as satin and pinky-pale,
Is a very different thing by far
From the lumps of iniquity big pigs are;
And the queen of the fays herself might ride
On a plump little pigling, justified.
So might witchkin, − if she did,
Not by me shall the truth be hid.
But as for a broomstick, there you can trust her:
My lady indeed, as it might be presumed,
Would n’t mount upon less than a peacock-plumed,
Ivory-handled parlor duster !

That’s the witch, − and as for the thief,
His innocence glows in a like relief,
Though a cleverer larcenist never was known
From the earliest period down to our own.
Take the thieves,− and whenever you will,
Dream is better than constable ;
Take the thieves, − you have but to dream,
And they come in a higgledy-piggledy stream,−
Look at them running ! − a multiform,
Multitudinous, motley swarm.
All converging with roaring hum;
Slap them down as fast as they come,
And toss them up in a tumulus, −
Autolycus ; oily Sisyphus ;
The cannibal robber, Polyphemus;
Great kine-stealing Hercules ;
The gods and demigods of Greece;
The bloody and hairy bugaboo,
Cacus, whom Alcides slew;
The illustrious Thracian thief, the brander
Of the glory of Alexander;
And the robber beyond description,
(Apropos, although Egyptian,)
Ptolemy, who from Greece and us,
Stole the dramas of Æschylus ;
Ionians, Dorians, Peloponnesians,
And in a general way the Grecians;
O, the roaring ! O, the humming!

Faster and faster see them coming !
The Romans lead like ocean surging,
Juvenal them like tempest scourging;
The Jew floods in behind the Pagan,-_
Barabbas ; Jacob ; Achan ; Fagin ;
All the money-changers sordid,
Once that in the Temple horded ;
Titus, Dumachus (ambushed they laid,
And the Holy Family waylaid);
Demas, Gestas (doomed to languish,
Sharers they of Calvary’s anguish);
Wretched Judas, sire, of all men,
To the old-clo’men and three-ball men ;
Farragut, Charlemagne’s Jew physician ;
(He must have thieved in that position !)
Shylock ; Rothschild hunkey-dory ;
Massena ; Moses Montefiore ;
Abaddon, − O the streaming, pouring,
Bellowing mass ! − and over them roaring,
Norman Rollo, sea-kings, vi-kings ;
Danes and Swedes of property likings;
And all of the Front-de-Bœuf feudality,
Knights and barons of high rascality ;
And Italy’s fine romantic fellows,
Pale Rinaldinis and brown Brunellos,
Intermixed with the rough banditti,
The tavern-keepers of every city,
And cardinals, popes, and men of standing,
Made sublime by Dante’s branding :
And Avallaneda, who tried to plant his
Villanous paw on the work of Cervantes,
Ranked for that with the Ginesillos,
Gil Blas robbers and Lazarillos,
And long, tumultuous, swarthy train
Of whiskerandoes belonging to Spain,−
Chief of them all, as I deplore,
Jew-plundering Cid Campeador.
Up they pile on the tumulus growing,
And after − hark to the cockerel crowing !
The thieves of France, a wolfish flock, −
Ganelon, Villon, Cartouche, Vidocq,
Lamirande, Thenardier, Lacenaire,
Louis Napoleon and Robert Macaire ;
These, and a duodecillion follow, −
And in with a grunt of thunder wallow,
The lager-beery, Rhiney-winy,
Tobaccoey German robbers swiny;
Schinderhannes, their captain-boar;
Horsed upon him is Charles de Moor;
Close behind, as grand and big,
As though he were anything else but a pig,
Frederick comes, who stole Silesia,
Worse than Philip of Macedon Grecia; And up to any mark, much less his mark,
Schleswig-Holstein-stealing Bismarck,
Cheek by jowl with red King William,
Paris who tried to make like Ilium ;
Up, and let the tumulus swallow ’em !
Decenter thieves, thank goodness ! follow ’em,-
The Rhoderick Dhus and bold Rob Roys,
And droves of bare-legged Highland boys ;
Robin Hood of Sherwood green ;
The abbots and lords that matched him clean;
Friar Tuck, with his oaken maul-staff;
Pistol, Poins, Prince Hal, and Falstaff;
William, who raked all England down ;
Blood, who tried for the English crown ;
Claude Duval, with light heels dancing ;
Turpin proud, on Black Bess prancing ;
Macheath; the British in Hindustan;
(Thieves and robbers every man !)
Sheppard ; Barnwell and his charmer ;
Blueskin ; Wild; the Golden Farmer;
The horde of frowsy, greasy, jaily,
Gallowsy rogues of the grim Old Bailey;
The Forty Thieves in a knotted coil,
Scorched with Morgiana’s oil;
The Hindu thieves who are oiled to steal,
And slip your gripe like a conger eel ;
The Gypsies, swart as their Egypt eldern,
Stealing horses, stealing children ;
All the Malays, Greeks, and Cretans,
Algerines, Arabs, Otaheitans ;
The apple-stealers, Adam and Eve,
Father and mother of all that thieve ;
And all the sharpers, cozeners, rooks,
Footpads, plagiarists of books,
Gonophs, picaroons, William Walkers,
Kansas red-legs and jay-hawkers,
Divers, millers, cheats, freebooters,
Setters, picklocks, burglars, looters,
National-bankers, horse-thieves, slavers,
Ten-per-cent-a-month note-shavers,
Indian agents, money-is-king men,
Erie, Wall Street, whiskey-ring men,
Swindle-through-the-lobby oar-men,
Pacific Railroad men-of-war men,
Anti-laborer cheap-Chinese men
(Alias tatter-and-starve-and-freeze men),
Embezzlers, scampsmen, demi-lunesmen,
Fakers, prigs, Diana’s moonsmen,
Shirks, pickpockets, stock-inflaters,
And all the shoals of speculators
In flour, in coal, in beef, in pork,
And the Common Council of New York; −
Pile them up and burden them down, With the Common Council for a crown, −
Pile them up in a tumulus tall,
With Mercury, god of thieves, on all, −
And over the wriggling mass of depravity,
Raised by merit and moral gravity,
Top of the heap entire and clean,
Will the sweet little minikin thief be seen !
He could steal with deft dexterity,
The honey-bag from the rapiered bee,
Quicker than you can say to me,
Honorificabilitudinity!
He could steal the lash from the eye of a star,
Or the sparkle out of the heart of a spar ;
He could steal the fame from a conqueror’s name,
And shame and blame from a noble aim,
Next to impossible feats, I claim.
Naught you might guard with Solomon’s seal,
Or dog or police, but he could steal;
Steal as surely as high desire,
Eagle ambition and hope like fire,
Beauty and health and the heart for strife,
And the glory and perfume and grace of life,
Are stolen, and vainly sought when gone,
By a Government office in Washington.

This wondrous thief purveyed you,−
This lovely bright witch made you, −
And this is the way it was done.

Into a grand conservatory,
Lit by the moon of summer’s glory,
The thief stole deep in the midnight hours,
And from a mass of camellias there,
Plucked the splendid candid flowers,−
Never a one did he spare ;
And lone in her aromatic saloon, −
Where in the darks and lights of the moon,
Slept shapes of parian, buhl, and pearl,
And rich-hued ottoman and fauteuil ; −
Where wind-moved draperies’ shadow-play
Crossed and confused the sumptuous ray,
And shadowy flames from tripods made
Delicious shimmerings kin to shade; −
A temple of bloom and dusk and gleam,
An alabaster and velvet dream ; −
The bright witch, smiling and debonair,
Sat, and charmed in the magic night,
The petals into a lady white, −
Glowing white and fair.
Still they bloom, brilliant and fresh,
In your camellia flesh ; They are the splendor and grace
Of your japonica face ;
And the glossy camellia leaves are seen
In the dress you wear of silken green.

And the thief went off where night uncloses
Her sleeping wild white roses.
He left them slumbering on the stem,
But he stole the odor out of them,
And brought it all to the fay.
She was singing a melody sweet and gay
Of tender and dreamful sound ;
And as she sang there breathed around
Some rich confusion, dim and strange;
And change that was and was not change,
Perplext the semblance of her hall
To a doubtful bowery garden tall;-
The columns and wavering tapestries
To indeterminate shapes of trees,
With darkling foliage swaying slow ;
And checkering shadows strown below
On the pile enflowered of Persian looms,
Becoming vague parterres of blooms;
And glittering ormolu, green divan,
Fauteuil, and lounge, and ottoman,
Half merged, transfiguring yet thereto,
In forms of bushes gemmed with dew,
Shrubs blossomy-bright or freaked with gleams,
Dark banks and hillocks touched with beams;
With vase and statue here and there,
As in some ordered garden rare.
And what o’er all did stream and flee,
Lifted and dropt perpetually,−
Flame-shimmerings and the flooding ray,-
Half seemed the revel of sun and May.
A wilder life began to show;
A wilder air began to blow ;
Subtly through all, like a soul,
The breath of the wild-rose stole;
But suddenly the song did swoon,
And the place was again a grand saloon,
With the small witch, smiling and debonair,
O’er the work she had wrought in secret there.
What was it ? Where was the odor gone ?-
O arch, gay face I am dreaming on,-
Sweet face that tenderly shows
In its delicate paly glows,
It was moulded from the perfume of the wild white rose,-
He who gazes sees, if he but will,
The dream of the roses on thee still!
The wild-rose fragrance haunts the face so fair,
And the witch’s song is there.

And meanwhile, back and forth,
East and west and south and north,
Hither and thither went the thief,
Bringing morality to grief
By his manifold picarooning.
The man in the moon was nigh to swooning
When he saw him climb, like a sailor the shrouds,
Up the moonrays as high as the clouds,
And steal the amber halo there, −
Whereof the witch did weave your hair.
Yea, and he stole the selfsame hour
A vivid scarlet geranium flower,
And a pomegranate fed by the Florida sun :
The first was used for your upper lip,
And the last for the pouting under one.
Yea, and he stole ere break of day
The man in the moon’s best ivory ray:
Laugh at this, that again I may see
The splendid teeth in the scarlet mouth
(Flower of the North, fruit of the South),
Stolen from the moon-man’s ivory !
Laugh, and turn your eyes this way :
A piece of the gold-lit dawn, I say,
Made those eyes of shining gray.
A famous chief of the Yankton Sioux
Saw the theft and told the news,
And out of the prompt, unanimous jaws
Of the hollopin-gollopin braves and squaws,
Has since been known as Hole-in-the-Day.

O girl of the eyes of golden gray,
This was the way, this was the way !
I tell not all, but how could I tell
The half of the prodigies that befell? −
For, O, as I see you standing there,
With your soft spring-dawn and flower-like air;
Your willowy shape’s perfection told
In the silken cadence of fall and fold ;
And all you wear and are, into one
Delicate, elegant harmony run ;
Your sparkling girdle of filigree
And the red of your mouth, a euphony ;
The late new fashion and hues of dress,
As rhyme to your natural loveliness ; −
With the warm and abundant glow of May
Lighting your eyes of luminous gray,
Your tender smiling, your festal mien,
Your dainty laces, your robe of green,
Your amber tresses in diadem
With color and glitter of fillet and gem; And something about your form and face
That tallies with essence and silk and lace ;
And something else that as well may suit
With star and jewel and blossom and fruit; −
Seeing you, O young Eve-dressed-well!
Grace-diabolical ! Peri-belle!
A-la-mode-angel! Siren-child !
Dandy-dryad ! − enrapt, beguiled,
I feel at the time of your origin,
That the witch and the thief were themselves mixed in!

True?−Indeed it is utterly true:
Look at the lovers bewitched by you !
True?—Indeed it is truth I say:
Have n’t you stolen their hearts away ?
So help me Cupid ! I see you stand,
With the smile on your lip and the fan in your hand,
And in files on files they round you kneel,
Like the radiate spokes from the hub of a wheel,
Each of them under your sorceries’ thrall,
And the hearts gone out of the breasts of all!
Ah ! the rosy heaven decrees
Recompense for deeds like these !
This you ’ll know when the hour of doom
Comes in music, balm, and bloom,−
When, among that love-lorn crew,
One in turn bewitches you,
And another heart secures
By completely stealing yours !