Perhaps it was reading too much Pride and Prejudice, or maybe it was reciting to much Victorian poetry. Whatever the reason was, I composed this poem with an Austen ballroom in mind. It is a rather inconsequential poem in terms of content, but it still did make me practice a complicated rhyme scheme and the depiction of a particular moment of thought in human interactions.
I saw you right across the room
And knew you right away,
Within a crowd of coats and plumes
My eyes still somehow lay
Upon your face, your countenance,
Your actions, words, and bends,
Then to my heart I asked, perchance,
“Are you a stranger or a friend?”
I saw you walk towards my side
With smile upon your face,
But as you walked your youthful stride
Below the ballroom’s daze,
My heart pulled back in hesitance,
My hand I could not lend,
For then I asked myself, perchance,
“Are you a stranger or a friend?”
I knew you not, yet you I knew,
A paradox was done;
Familiarity in you
Was equal parts to none.
So I smiled back and walked away,
The audience thus did end,
So now I cannot ever say
If you were stranger or a friend.
