Explore "A Portrait" by Thomas Burke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
How shall I write of you, little friend, / To my father on the River of Serenity? / I will tell him of your twenty yellow curls / Tumbling in a cascade about your shoulders; / Your bright mouth and fine brow, / Lit by yet brighter eyes, / Where fireflies dance; / How in your cheeks you hold / The colours of the flower before its leaves unclose; / How the tones of your voice, sounding in my ears, / Float before my eyes like strings of lanterns; / How, when I look closely upon you, / I see my thoughts like a white river in your eyes; / How, as I walk down the street where you have trod, / The very stones are to me the smiles that you scatter as you pass. / How your look thrills my heart as a guitar thrills to the touch.
And I will tell him that you are not for me, / For you are white and I am yellow; / Unless, perchance, shame and disgrace fall upon you, / As it falls upon some girls of this quarter, / And your neighbours and friends pass by the other way. / Then, perhaps, it would be permitted to me / To render service to you.