I Watched the Lady Caroline

I Watched the Lady Caroline
by Walter De la Mare

I watched the Lady Caroline
Bind up her dark and beauteous hair;
Her face was rosy in the glass,
And ‘twixt the coils her hand would pass,
White in the candleshine.

Her bottles on the table lay,
Stoppered, yet sweet of violet;
Her image in the mirror stooped
To view those locks as lightly looped
As cherry-boughs in May.

The snowy night lay dim without,
I heard the Waits their sweet song sing;
The window smouldered keen with frost;
Yet still she twisted, sleeked and tossed
Her beauteous hair about.