Love the Beautifier

Transcript from original newspaper article published in the Illustrated London News 28th May 1859 : -

LOVE THE BEAUTIFIER

“The Two Books” is a sweet picture of “a lover and his lass.”
It is fanciful, and at the same time full of tenderness and truth: -

THE TWO BOOKS.

A lover and his lass
Lay reading on the grass
A book of olden story,
The maiden’s eyes were bright
With pity and delight,
And stray’d not from the book,
E’en for a casual look
At him her life’s dear lord –
Beside her on the sward;
But read, with lips apart,
The too entrancing tale that thrill’d through all her heart.

Two lover’s eyes, twin thieves,
Stole glances from the leaves –
Now to those milk-white shoulders,
The charm of all beholders;
Now to those sunny eyes,
Blue-bright as Paradise;
Now to her steaming curls,
Or ruby-cover’d pearls,
Whence issued sweether breath
Than south wind scattereth;
Then to her dainty hand,
Or little fairy feet, star-twinklers in the land.

“Ah well-a-day!” quoth he,
“Thy book’s no book for me.
The page I read is rarer,
And tenderer, and fairer;
For thine contains, at best,
Life-shadows – love’s unrest;
But mine contains all truth,
All beauty and all youth,
All feelings fond and coy,
And deep and passionate joy.
Be books upon the shelf!
My stories are thine eyes; my poem is THYSELF!”

Who that has sat with the shades of evening gathering around him has not felt the “good companionship” so charmingly set forth in the first verse of the accompanying stanzas?