From The Sunday Crescent

AT THE BALL

By Xariffa

I

Nay, do not bend thy lips toward mine ear

To whisper, ‘mid the music and the light,

And dizzy dancers’ maddening career,

They story of thy strong heart’s early blight.

II

I do not care to know.  Of little worth

I count that friendship which would fain exact,

As tribute due its accidental birth,

The key to thy past’s storehouse of grim fact.

III

Keep thine own secrets hidden in thy heart

Twixt them and me let Silence hang her screen;

I ask but rely on what thou art—

It matters little what “thou mayst have been

IV

There is a bluebeard chamber with us all

Perhaps-a little key, a lock all rust,-

Where hangs, beheaded on the gloomy wall

Within our proudest hopes our noblest trust.

V

Each human life its solemn mystery hath;

Its hidden love or its embitter hat;

It weary wandering in some stony path;

Its fruitless beating ‘gainist eh bars of fate;

VI

It eager aim at empyrean heights;

Its downward hurling among lowly things;

The fading from its eyes of dearest sights

The painless folding of its bruised wings;

VII

Its spring of promise, rich in bud and bloom

Its death and burial, and it s lonely stone

Hewn from the quarries of despair and gloom

To mark; some grave to all the world unknown?

VIII

So, if thou hast thy wounds, display them no

True sympathy demands no show of scars.

Thrust sponges, from life’s tablet every blot

And doubt no honest friendship ever mars.

IX

But come the balcony grow chill, I feel,

Back’mong the merry, maskers let usage,

To hear the tap of the hilarious heel.

And see them point the educated toe,

X

The rush, the whirl the music and the lare;

The masks that hide false face and the ends

Encompassed by deception, all are there

Your arm. So Now good nights, my best of friends.

Title:  AT THE BALL
Author: Xariffa
Location: New Orleans,
Year:  Jan., 1869
Media:  Newspaper article, glued to  the Ledger of Captain W. B. Blair

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