Stanzas for "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle"
Document Actions
("The Naked Eye of the Aunt")
I peopled the dark park with gowns In which were yellow, rancid skeletons. Oh! How suave a purple passed me by! But twiddling mon idée, as old men will, And knowing the monotony of thought, I said, "She thumbs the memories of dress." Can I take fire from so benign an ash? It is enough that she comes upon the eye. A maid of forty is no feathery girl. Green bosoms and black legs, beguile These ample lustres from the new-come moon. Poets of pimpernel, unlucky pimps Of pomp, in love and good ensample, see How I exhort her, huckstering my woe. "Oh, hideous, horrible, horrendous hocks!" Is there one word of sunshine in this plaint? Do I commend myself to leafy things Or melancholy crows as shadowing clouds? I grieve the pinch of her long-stiffening bones. "Oh lissomeness turned lagging ligaments!" Eheu! Eheu! With what a weedy face Black fact emerges from her swishing dreams.
Eheu: The words and theme are evocative of Horace's Eheu, fugaces labuntur anni ("Alas, the fleeting years slip by")
Swishing dreams: The metaphor of the sleeper emerging out of watery depths is reworked into stanza 3 of Le Monocle de Mon Oncle.
