My love is now a woman grown.
About her shoulders fall no more
Her locks, in beauty all their own.
Their days of liberty are o’er.
No longer may, with soft caress,
The zephyr’s unseen hand uplift
Each net-like, golden-threaded tress
To catch the sunlight’s moted drift.
I know each tress, and have a name
Whereby my memory holds it dear,
From that which is her forehead’s frame
To that which hides her shelly ear.
And one there is I loved to touch,
On which my heart first suffered wreck,
That sometimes fell aside too much
And showed the ivory of her neck.
And though ’tis bound upon her head
And all its beauty hid from me,
Still other charms I see instead,
And still am in captivity.
I see the grace of neck and ear
Unveiled, that erst beneath the tress
But peeped, as pearly sea shells peer
Through ocean’s weedy wilderness.
Ye captive tresses that disdained
My love, and wantoned in the wind,
I know your grief, for I was chained
Her slave ere ye were thus confined.
She hath but gloried in our love,
And laughs to find us strain our gyves.
Come, let us slaves unite and prove
That power to break her bond survives.
Aid me with love her heart to chain,
And soon, when she and I are wed,
My hands shall set ye free again
To wanton sweetly round her head.