The spare professor, grave and bald, <br />Began his paper. It was called, <br />I think, "A Brief Historic Glance <br />At Russia, Germany, and France." <br />A glance, but to my best belief <br />'T was almost anything but brief-- <br />A wide survey, in which the earth <br />Was seen before mankind had birth; <br />Strange monsters basked them in the sun, <br />Behemoth, armored glyptodon, <br />And in the dawn's unpractised ray <br />The transient dodo winged its way; <br />Then, by degrees, through slit and slough, <br />We reached Berlin--I don't know how. <br />The good Professor's monotone <br />Had turned me into senseless stone <br />Instanter, but that near me sat <br />Hypatia in her new spring hat, <br />Blue-eyed, intent, with lips whose bloom <br />Lighted the heavy-curtained room. <br />Hypatia--ah, what lovely things <br />Are fashioned out of eighteen springs! <br />At first, in sums of this amount, <br />The eighteen winters do not count. <br />Just as my eyes were growing dim <br />With heaviness, I saw that slim, <br />Erect, elastic figure there, <br />Like a pond-lily taking air. <br />She looked so fresh, so wise, so neat, <br />So altogether crisp and sweet, <br />I quite forgot what Bismarck said, <br />And why the Emperor shook his head, <br />And how it was Von Moltke's frown <br />Cost France another frontier town. <br />The only facts I took away <br />From the Professor's theme that day <br />Were these: a forehead broad and low, <br />Such as antique sculptures show; <br />A chin to Greek perfection true; <br />Eyes of Astarte's tender blue; <br />A high complection without fleck <br />Or flaw, and curls about her neck.<br /><br />Thomas Bailey Aldrich<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/at-a-reading/
