Who can describe the Southern Belle,
Or even half her glory tell,
When rhyme and reason go pell-mell
In floods of strong emotions?
While gazing in her wondrous eyes,
Where all the tempting lustre lies,
You get confused in sweet surprise
And wander in your notions.

Who sent the critic to the school
To measure beauty by the rule
Which pretty girls may ridicule
And Cupid call high treason?
Most any lover will confess
There are some eyes a power possess
To look one out of consciousness
And clean upset his reason.

In liquid eyes of limpid brown
The gazing youth would straightway drown,
But Cupid pulls the lashes down;
And coyly peeping under,
Bids him in that short leisure note
How nature forms the graceful throat
That makes admiring painters gloat
And sculptors pause in wonder.

Let eyes be brown or eyes be blue,
There's little choice betwixt the two;
A thrill of ecstasy goes through
The one on whom they linger.
Whatever crown she chance to wear,
Or dark, or gold, or auburn hair,
You bow; and wonder if you dare
Caress the tapered finger.

How oft the voice of childhood cries:
“Open your lips and close your eyes,
I'll give you that will make you wise!”
Now that the youth is older,
Dared he the same request to make,
All thought of giving he 'd forsake,
Guessing how many he would take!—
Were he a trifle bolder!

Such sweet enchantment in her style,
With every movement queenly; while
The Southern sunshine in her smile
Impels to adoration!
Her voice is music soft and clear,
Her dialect so charms the ear,
That angels pause, when they come near,
To catch her conversation.

The robins call me sweet and shrill:
“Come out and fare afield;
The sun has neared the western hill,
The shadows slip down sure and still,
But in our meadow wide and wet
There 's half an hour of sunshine yet;
Come down, come down!” Who would not yield?

Across the road and through the lane,
Where buttercups grow tall and bright
With daisies washed in last night's rain,—
Beyond the open bars I gain
An angle of the rude rail-fence,
A perfect coign of vantage, whence
Wheat-field and pasture stretch in sight.

The cows, with stumbling tread and slow,
One after one come straggling by,
And many a yellow head falls low,
And many a daisy's scattered snow,
Where the unheeding footsteps pass,
Is crushed and blackened in the grass,
With brier and rue that trampled lie.

Sweet sounds with sweeter blend and strive:
In its white prime of blossoming
Each wayside berry-bush, alive
With myriad bees, hums like a hive;
The frogs are loud in ditch and pool,
And songs unlearned of court or school
June's troubadours all round me sing.

Somewhere beneath the meadow's veil
The peewee's brooding notes begin;
The sparrows chirp from rail to rail;
Above the bickering swallows sail,
Or skim the green half-tasselled wheat
With plaintive cry; and at my feet
A cricket tunes his mandolin.

High-perched, a master-minstrel proud,
The red-winged blackbird pipes and calls,
One moment jubilant and loud,
The next, to sudden silence vowed,
Seeks cover in the marsh below;
Soft winds along the rushes blow,
And like a whisper twilight falls.