Daily Archives: February 14, 2007

Item of the Day: The New-York Mirror, and Ladies’ Literary Gazette (1829)

Full Title:  The New-York Mirror, and Ladies’ Literary Gazette. Volume VII. Number 13. New-York, Saturday, October 3, 1829.   Edited by George P. Morris, Volume VII. New York.  Printed and Published at the corner of Nassau and Ann Streets.

Eighteenth-Century Heart Pendant

Happy Valentine’s Day

THE LOVER AND THE ECHO.

 

LOVER.

Why am I doom’d the pangs to prove

Of absence, from my Anna far?

What bars me from those lips of love

whose colour rivals cinnabar?

 

ECHO.

A rival’s sin, a bar.

 

LOVER.

Is she still faithful to the vow

She made at parting, breathed in sighs?

Loves she with equal fervour now?

Would I her heart could analyze!

 

ECHO.

Anna lies.

 

LOVER.

I’d breathe my thoughts in amorous lay,

But, ah! I know not what to write;

For how can words those charms portray

Which might inflame an anchorite?

 

ECHO.

In flame and anger write.

 

LOVER.

I’ve praised her oft in tuneful feet,

Iambic, dactyl, and the rest;

but she, with smile and accent sweet,

Approved the lively anapest.

 

ECHO.

You proved the lively Ann a pest.

 

LOVER.

O will she soon be join’d to me,Whom she has fixed affection’s eye on,

And I, like an engrafted tree,

Nourish the young and tender scion?

 

ECHO.

Young and tender, sigh on.

 

LOVER.

O did she watch the rising moon,

Like me, with love and hope elated,

While listening to the cricket’s tune,

Last Sunday evening animated?

 

ECHO.

Last Sunday evening Anna mated.

 

LOVER.

I’ve brought a ring with sparkling gem,

Emblem of love that ne’er can falter,

To grace her slender finger, when

Her vows are plighted by the altar.

 

ECHO.

Her vows are plighted — buy the halter!

REUBEN.

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Filed under 1820's, Poetry, Posted by Rebecca Dresser, Women