DAINTIEST of Manicures! What a cunning hand is yours; And how awkward, rude and great Mine, as you manipulate! Wonderfully cool and calm Are the touches of your palm To my fingers, as they rest In their rosy, cozy nest, While your own, with deftest skill, Dance and caper as they will, -- Armed with instruments that seem Gathered from some fairy dream -- Tiny spears and simitars Such as pixy armorers Might have made for jocund fays To parade on holidays, And flash round in dewy dells, Lopping down the lily-bells; Or in tilting, o'er the leas, At the clumsy bumblebees, Splintering their stings, perchance, As the knights in old romance Snapped the spears of foes that fought In the jousts at Camelot! Smiling? Dainty Manicure? -- 'Twould delight me, but that you're Simply smiling, as I see, At my nails and not at me! Haply this is why they glow And light up and twinkle so! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...WINTER RAIN by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI THE GIRL'S LAMENTATION by WILLIAM ALLINGHAM GIVE HIM HIS DUE by LEVI BISHOP CATHERINE KINRADE by THOMAS EDWARD BROWN BRITANNIA'S PASTORALS: BOOK 1. THE SECOND SONG by WILLIAM BROWNE (1591-1643) THE RECOVERY OF MISS JESSY LEWARS by ROBERT BURNS SOLILOQUY OF A BARD IN THE COUNTRY by GEORGE GORDON BYRON LINES TO JULIA M --; SENT WITH A COPY OF THE AUTHOR'S POEMS by THOMAS CAMPBELL |