When Hearts Are Trumps

On a summer day, the three Graces take rosebuds for brushes and stars for eyes, painting a perfect face across the evening sky. They all choose the same model—and the poet knows her well.

Tom Hall’s late-nineteenth-century verses turn courtship into a lively, unpredictable game: a rose passed from a woman’s hair, a lover’s song beneath her window, a blush that says more than words. Some poems tease the hopeful suitor; others darken into duels, heartbreak, and sharp rebukes of marriage arranged for money. With wit, tenderness, and sudden drama, Hall asks what lovers can know of one another—and what the heart may conceal. When hearts are trumps, who gets to play the winning hand?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.