Dear Rhoda, our friends are ungrateful,
Yet who can give more when they wed?
We sent them of bride cake a plate-full,
And feasted ourselves on Brown Bread.
Our cake like ourselves was unspotted
With gilding and paint — white or red;
To us not a plum is allotted
But honesty, peace and Brown Bread.
Our paper no essences scented,
No Cupids emboss’d it, ’tis said—
But we with Love’s essence acquainted
Have kept it to grace our Brown Bread.
Let those who love sweetmeats and spices
By Charlotte and Leopold be fed;
But while in our bosoms no ice is
We’ll find sweets enough in Brown Bread.
Not once, when I look’d on thy beauty
Did eatables enter my head,
Till sighing I thought how thy duty
Might doom thee to share my Brown Bread.
Yet Fortune herself in her blindness
No gall on our morsel shall shed;
No tear but the sweet one of kindness
Shall moisten our meal of Brown Bread.
May hearts of such kindness unmindful,
Remain with their crust over-spread!
They know not how faces like thine full
Of smiles, may embellish Brown Bread.
Gay Wit may illumine the table,
While elegance sits at the head;
But only Good Nature is able
To make a regale of Brown Bread.
Then Rhoda! bid scorners good-bye too—
When Fortune and Fancy are fled
Fame, Fashion, and Friendship will fly too,
And leave them to welcome Brown Bread.
But when by the proud world forsaken
Our white cottage-threshold they tread,
Their cup at our board shall be taken
With blessings, and half our Brown Bread!
A