The red painted birds
                                                of Amsterdam
                                                            standing under the clock
                                           pecked the crumbs
                                                            from my warm pocket
 
                                           They talked to me with broken smiles
                                           half-friend, half-foreign, all free
                                           And knew the ancient dialect of looks
                                           That said, I shall blush for thee.
 
                                                            They professed with a fan
                                                                        their desire
                                           of having more
                                                            lasting acquaintance
                                                                        helping conduct the business
                                                of my trip to town
                                                            by flaunting beside me
                                                                        with red topknots
                                                soft-modest, alluring,
                                                                                    and free
 
                                           First put one penny in my purse
 
                                           Twenty times more genteel
                                                     than the subjects
        
                                                                of halfpenny romances
                                           covered with bosoms
                                                     whose each fickle art
                                                                        warmed like cordials
                                           taken as decoy
                                                     into my system
                                                            a slow rising fever
                                           that spread to each part
                                                     yet one I dearly wished
                                                            to relieve
 
                                           First put one penny in my purse
 
                                           My pleasure was almost
                                                     Unspeakable
                                                            except by opposite tones
                                           of reproof
                                                     as I give in my Sunday sermons
                                                            to those who partake
                                           without the intenseness
                                                     the warmth or the warmth
                                                            of such throbbing
                                           disapprobation as mine
 
                                           First put one penny in my purse
 
                                                “My dear deluded flock,” I say,
                                                            as I counterfeit false resentment
                       &nbsp
;                                                with my hair brushed out
                                           and blooming from pocket
                                                            to invite their touch on my cheek,
                                                “I wish to reproach your baseness.”
 
                                           I talked to them with broken smiles
                                           half-friend, half-foreign, all free
                                           And knew the ancient dialect of looks
                                           That said, I shall blush for thee.

​                              Of the blackbirds that so agreeably entertained us,
                              two angles of a triangle are equal to
                              three strange wants,
                              dispatching four of his domestics to seize me.
                              I threw a deuce ace five times running
                              in about six hours returned with a verbal answer;
                              they were drawn with seven oranges
                              to six or eight wives more.
                              The colt that has been in our family these nine years—​​
                              scarce a farmer’s daughter within ten miles round—​​
                              our cock, which always crew at eleven,
                              after an interval of twelve years.
 
                              At fourteen, I knew the world, cocked my hat, and loved the ladies,
                              took likenesses for fifteen shillings a head.
                              Thou art now sixteen years old,
                              counterfeiting every age from seventeen.

​Nicholas D. Nace is the editor of two volumes of essays on the art of close reading: Shakespeare Up Close (2012) and The Fate of Difficulty (forthcoming 2017). He has written for The Burlington Magazine, The Book Collector, and other journals. Other poems from his first collection are forthcoming from Fence, Rabbit, and the Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review.