# Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 3/Amata

AMATA.
Who has not known Amata, And bowed him to her thrall, The despot of the drawing-room, The peerless of the ball?
Amata looked, and longed for Three seasons now or so, ’Neath pertest hat the brightest face At noontide in the Row?
She moves in graceful glory by, She glistens through the dance, The cynosure of every wish, The aim of every glance,
In such a light of loveliness As crushes to eclipse The sheen of wreathed bandeaux, The swim of silken slips.
The proudest forms bend round her In homage to her will; Still she is woo’d Amata, Unwon Amata still.
I wonder, in the dawning When she is borne away, And early sparrows chirp along Her partner’s homeward way,
When he checks the music-memories To think of her between The refrain of “Dinorah” And the ripple of “Lurline,”—
I wonder if a conscience smite That eligible swain, How wild his least ambition were, His lightest hope how vain!
For, if I read Amata right, (I often think I do,) The curling of her dainty lip, The fair cheek’s changeless hue;
The listless hand on proffered arm, The guile of soft replies, With restless face averted To dazzle other eyes;
Ill is the augury I spell Of feeling or of force To train the tide of power and pride In love’s submissive course;
And dim, and dark, and doubtful Is figured to my view That future friendship loves to trace, Dear little girls, for you.
On, on in bright procession The pretty votaries pass; I read the fate of years to come In Fancy’s magic glass.
On many a fold of soft brown hair And pure unfretted brow The matron’s tiar rests as light As girlhood’s roses now.
Northward on some broad manor Fair Edith’s lot is set; At Stanhope Gate some fortunate Has throned his sweet Annette;
Lucy, whose bloom is rather full, And Jane, who’s far too pale, Have flutter’d in the orange-wreath, And trembled ’neath the veil;
And bells peal high against the sky O’er street and silent plain, But I listen for thy wedding-chime, Amata, all in vain.
Town lavishes its dusty charms, And Cowes its freshening sea; Here Fashion spreads its parquets smooth, Its white decks there for thee;
And still before that costly shrine Heart, hand, and hope are laid;— Unmelted still the haughty look, The tender word unsaid!
Go, colder than the glacier, And loftier than the Alps— Go, treasuring the bleeding hearts, As Indians treasure scalps!
With freedom all so loveable, And flirting all so sweet, And myriad vassals to subdue, And myriad at thy feet,
There must be—conquest’s current yet So silverly flows on— There must be ample time to yield, And leisure to be won.—
Not so, if truth the poet years In constant cadence sing, That Autumn’s fondest sunshine Unfolds no buds of Spring.
He will not linger near us Neglected and content, The baby-boy from Paphos With bow for ever bent.
We may not furl his pinion To serve us at our will, When all the happy lovelight pales And all the soul grows chill.
Ah me, ah me! a future Is drear upon my glass! I see the dimples deepening, I see the bright bloom pass;
See, one by one, how fickle youth Suffers, and wakes, and thinks, And breaks the rosy fetter, And casts aside the links.
More laboured swells the toilette, More studied gleams the smile, Like moonlight on the tracery Of some forsaken pile.
And comes the tide then freighted With worship now no more? And is there mocking on the sea At mourning on the shore?
The supple knee has vanished, The pleading voice is mute, Unculled the flower of flattery, Unstrung the lover’s lute:
And desolate Amata, Like some discrownèd queen, Sits sorrowing for the empire lost, And the glories that have been.
Ralph A. Benson.