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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Antoinette De Coursey Patterson

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The Treasure Drawer

Antoinette De Coursey Patterson

OFTEN in memory to a drawer I turn

Wherein my mother kept such queer, strange things,

For which with a child’s fancy I would yearn:

An ivory fan, emerald and opal rings,

Attar of roses in a bottle tall

With traceries of Arabesque design,

A pair of velvet slippers, dainty, small—

I doubted Cinderella’s were so fine—

Made up the treasures: and a mother-o’-pearl

And lacquer box, tight locked, of which the key

Had long been lost—since she was quite a girl,

She said. Years passed, and then the mystery

Was solved: three little feathers, golden bright,

Lay side by side, labelled in childish hand

As “Piccadilly’s Feathers.” How my sight

Grew dim, for I at last could understand

The loneliness a pet canary filled.

Ah, I could wish at times those memories,

Like Piccadilly’s songs, might all be stilled—

Or locked in some pearl casket from these eyes!