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Home  »  American Sonnets  »  James Berry Bensel (1856–1886)

Higginson and Bigelow, comps. American Sonnets. 1891.

A Portrait

James Berry Bensel (1856–1886)

IN the white sweetness of her dimpled chin

The pink points of her perfumed fingers press,

And ’round her tremulous mouth’s loveliness

The tears and smiles a sudden strife begin:

First one and then the other seems to win:

And o’er her drooping eyes a golden tress

Falls down to hide what else they might confess

Their blue-veined lids are striving to shut in.

The yellow pearls that bind her throat about

With her pale bosom’s throbbing rise or fall:

The while her thoughts like carrier-doves have fled

To that far land where armies clash and shout,

And where, beyond love’s reach, a soldier tall

With staring eyes and broken sword lies dead.