The Made to Order Smile
When a woman looks up at you with a twist about her eyes,
And her brows are half uplifted in a nicely feigned surprise As you breathe some pretty sentence, though she hates you all the while,
She is very apt to stun you with a made to order smile.
It's a subtle combination of a sneer and a caress,
With a dash of warmth thrown in to relieve its iciness,
And she greets you when she meets you with that look as if a file Had been used to fix and fashion out the made to order smile.
I confess that I'm eccentric and am not a woman's man,
For they seem to be constructed on the bunko fakir plan,
And it somehow sets me thinking that her heart is full of guile When a woman looks up at me with a made to order smile.
Now, all maidens, young and aged, hear the lesson I would teach:
Ye who meet us in the ballroom, ye who meet us at the beach,
Pray consent to try and charm us by some other sort of wile And relieve us from the burden of that made to order smile.
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Other author posts
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Wintah, summah, snow er shine, Hit's all de same to me, Ef only I kin call you mine, An' keep you by my knee Ha'dship, frolic, grief er caih, Content by night an' day, Ef only I kin see you whaih You wait beside de way Livin', dyin', smi...
The Paradox
I am the mother of sorrows, I am the ender of grief; I am the bud and the blossom, I am the late-falling leaf
The Poet
He sang of life, serenely sweet, With, now and then, a deeper note From some high peak, nigh yet remote, He voiced the world's absorbing beat He sang of love when earth was young, And Love, itself, was in his lays
Douglass
Ah, Douglass, we have fall'n on evil days, Such days as thou, not even thou didst know, When thee, the eyes of that harsh long ago Saw, salient, at the cross of devious ways,
