Fifty-Fifty
[We think about the feminine faces we meet in the streets, and experience a passing melancholy because we are unacquainted with some of the girls we see.—From “The Erotic Motive in Literature,” by Albert Mordell.]
Whene’er I take my walks abroad,
How many girls I see
Whose form and features I applaud
With well-concealéd glee!
I’d speak to many a sonsie maid,
Or willowy or obese,
Were I not fearful, and afraid
She’d yell for the police.
And Melancholy, bittersweet,
Marks me then as her own,
Because I lack the nerve to greet
The girls I might have known.
Yet though with sadness I am fraught,
(As I remarked before),
There is one sweetly solemn thought
Comes to me o’er and o’er:
For every shadow cloud of woe
Hath argentine alloy;
I see some girls I do not know,
And feel a passing joy.