To His Brown-Eyed Mistress
Who Rallied Him for Praising Blue Eyes in His Verses
If sometimes, in a random phrase
(For variation in my ditty),
I chance blue eyes, or gray, to praise
And seem to intimate them pretty—
It is because I do not dare
With too unmixed reiteration
To sing the browner eyes and hair
That are my true intoxication.
Know, then, that I consider brown
For ladies’ eyes, the only color;
And deem all other orbs in town
(Compared to yours), opaquer, duller.
I pray, perpend, my dearest dear;
While blue-eyed maids the praise were drinking,
How insubstantial was their cheer—
It was of yours that I was thinking!