To Mary Pickford - Moving-picture Actress

(On hearing she was leaving the moving-pictures for the stage.)



    Mary Pickford, doll divine,
    Year by year, and every day
    At the moving-picture play,
    You have been my valentine.

    Once a free-limbed page in hose,
    Baby-Rosalind in flower,
    Cloakless, shrinking, in that hour
    How our reverent passion rose,
    How our fine desire you won.
    Kitchen-wench another day,
    Shapeless, wooden every way.
    Next, a fairy from the sun.

    Once you walked a grown-up strand
    Fish-wife siren, full of lure,
    Snaring with devices sure
    Lads who murdered on the sand.
    But on most days just a child
    Dimpled as no grown-folk are,
    Cold of kiss as some north star,
    Violet from the valleys wild.
    Snared as innocence must be,
    Fleeing, prisoned, chained, half-dead -
    At the end of tortures dread
    Roaring cowboys set you free.

    Fly, O song, to her to-day,
    Like a cowboy cross the land.
    Snatch her from Belasco's hand
    And that prison called Broadway.

    All the village swains await
    One dear lily-girl demure,
    Saucy, dancing, cold and pure,
    Elf who must return in state.