CHARLOTTE WITHERS

We might have
fallen quite
melodiously
in love.

Her father
the widowed
Mr. Withers
was in town
visiting his
umquwhile
clientage
on carboniferous
business.

While
he wandered
on the coal wharves
we disputed
the relative merits
of painting
and music.

I wrote an essay
nine foolscap
pages long
dedicated to the
total overthrow
and discomfiture
of her opinions
and the establishment
of mine.

She wasn’t pretty,
rather, pleasant
in a wild-flower
sort of way,
especially if her
eyes were
looking at you,
and her mind
with them.

I said
goodbye
to this fragile,
freckled, fair,
sensitive
slip of a girl
on Camberwell Green
in the Spring of ’38.

A short
while later
her father
“negotiated” her
marriage
to a Newcastle
coal merchant,
who treated her
pretty much
as one of his
coal sacks
and she died
within a year.

(Ruskin, Praeterita, pp. 207-8.)