Helen Gray Cone

The Spring Beauties

  The Puritan Spring Beauties stood freshly clad for church;
  A Thrush, white-breasted, o'er them sat singing on his perch.
  "Happy be! for fair are ye!" the gentle singer told them,
  But presently a buff-coat Bee came booming up to scold them.
    "Vanity, oh, vanity!
    Young maids, beware of vanity!"
    Grumbled out the buff-coat Bee,
    Half parson-like, half soldierly.

  The sweet-faced maidens trembled, with pretty, pinky blushes,
  Convinced that it was wicked to listen to the Thrushes;
  And when, that shady afternoon, I chanced that way to pass,
  They hung their little bonnets down and looked into the grass,
    All because the buff-coat Bee
    Lectured them so solemnly:—
    "Vanity, oh, vanity!
    Young maids, beware of vanity!"