Façade

Ass-Face drank
The asses' milk of the stars...
the millky spirals as they sank
From heaven's saloons
and golden bars,
Made a gown
For Columbine,
Spirting, down
On sands divine
By the asses' hide of the sea
(With each tide braying free).
And the beavers building Babel
Beneath each tree's thin beard,
Said, "Is it Cain and Abel
fighting again we heard?"
It is Ass-Face, Ass-Face,
Drunk on the milk of the stars,
Who will spoil their houses
of white lace -
Expelled from the golden bars!

When
 Don
Pasquito arrived at the seaside
Where the donkey's hide tide
brayed, he
Saw the bandito Jo in a black cape
Whose slack shape waved like the sea -
Thetis wrote a treatise noting wheat
is silver like the sea;
the lovely cheat is sweet as foam;
Erotis notices that she
 Will
 Steal
 The
Wheat-kings luggage, like Babel
Before the League of Nations grew -
So Jo put the luggage and the label
In the pocket of Flo the Kangaroo.
Through trees like rich hotels that bode
Of dreamless ease fled she,
Carrying the load and goading the road
Through the marine scene to the sea.
"Don Pasquito, the road is eloping
With your luggage
though heavy and large;
You must follow and leave your moping
Bride to my guidance and charge!"
When
Don
Pasquito returned
from the road's end,
Where vanilla-coloured ladies ride
From Sevilla, his mantilla'd bride
and young friend
Were forgetting
their mentor and guide.
For the lady and her friend
from Le Touquet
In the very shady trees on the sand
Were plucking a white satin bouquet
Of foam, while the sand's brassy band
Blared in the wind.
Don Pasquito
Hid where the leaves drip with
sweet...
But a word stung him like a
mosquito...
For what they hear, they repeat!

Something lies beyond the scene
the encre de chine, marine obscene
Horizon
In
Hell
Black as a bison
See the tall black Aga
on the sofa in the alga mope, his
Bell-rope
Moustache (clear as a great bell!)
Waves in eighteen-eighty
Bustles
Come
Late with tambourines of
Rustling
Foam.
They answer to the names
Of ancient dames and shames, and
Only call horizons their home.
Coldly wheeze (Chinese as these
black-armoured fleas that dance)
the breezes
Seeking for horizons
Wide; from her orisons
In her wide
Vermilion
Pavilion
By the seaside
The doors clang open and hide
Where the wind died
Nothing but the Princess
Cockatrice
Lean
Dancing a caprice
To the wind's tambourine.

Through gilded trellises
Of the heat, Dolores,
Inez, Manuccia,
Isabel, Lucia,
Mock Time that flies.
"Lovely bird, will you stay and sing,
Flirting your sheened wing,-
Peck with your beak, and cling
To our balconies?"
They flirt their fans, flaunting
"O silence enchanting
As music!" Then slanting
Their eyes,
Like gilded or emerald grapes,
They make mantillas, capes,
Hiding their simian shapes.
Sighes
Each lady, "Our spadille
Is done."...Dance the quadrille
from Hell's towers to Seville;
Surprise
Their siesta," Dolores
Said. Through gilded trellises
Of the heat, spangles
Pelt down through the tangles
Of bell flowers; each dangles
Her castanets, shutters
Fall while the heat mutters,
With sounds like a mandoline
Or tinkled tambourine...
Ladies, Time dies!

Do not take a bath in Jordan
Gordon,
On the holy Sabbath, on the peaceful day!
Said the huntsman,
playing on his old bagpipe,
Boring to death the pheasant
and the snipe -
Boring the ptarmigan
and grouse for fun -
Boring them worse
than a nine-bore gun.
Till the flaxen leaves where the
prunes are ripe,
Heard the tartan wind a-droning
through the pipe,
And they, heard Macpherson say:
"Where do the waves go; What hotels
Hide their bustles
and their gay ombrelles?
And would there be room for me? -
Would there be room,
Would there be room for me?"
There is a hotel at Ostend
Cold as the wind, without an end,
Haunted by ghostly poor relations
Of Bostonian conversations
(Like bagpipes rotting
through the walls.)
And there the pearl-ropes fall like shawls
With a noise like marine waterfalls.
And "Another little drink
wouldn't do us any harm"
Pierces through the sabbatical calm.
And that is the place for me!
So do not take a bath in Jordan,
Gordon,
On the holy Sabbath on the
peaceful day-
Or you'll never go to heaven,
Gordon Macpherson,
And speaking purely as a private person
That is the place - that is the place -
that is the place for me!

I

Upon the noon Cassandra died
The Harpy preened itself outside.
Bank holiday put forth its glamour,
And in the wayside station's clamour
We found the cafe at the rear,
And sat and drank our Pilsener beer.
Words smeared upon our wooden faces
Now paint them into queer grimaces;
The crackling greeneries that spirt
Like firworks, mock our souls inert,
And we seem feathered like a bird
Among the shadows scarcely heard.
Beneath her shade-ribbed
switchback mane
The harpy, breasted like a train,
Was haggling with a farmer's wife;
"Fresh harpy's eggs, no trace of life."
Miss Sitwell, cross and white as chalk,
Was indisposed for the small talk;
Since, peering through a shadowed door,
She saw Cassandra on the floor.

II

Upon the noon
Cassandra died,
Harpy soon
Screeched outside.
Gardener Jupp,
In his shed.
Counted wooden
Carrots red.
Black shades pass,
Dead-stiff there,
On green baize grass -
Drink his beer.
Bumpkin turnip,
Mask limp-locked,
White sun frights
The gardener shocked.
Harpy creaked
Her limbs again:
I think, she squeaked,
It's going to rain!"

The wind's bastinado
Whipt on the calico
Skin of the Macaroon
And the black Picaroon
Beneath the galloon
Of the midnight sky.
Came the great soldan
In his sedan
Floating his fan-
Saw what the sly
Shadow's cocoon
In the barracoon
Held. Out they fly.
"This melon,
Sir Mammon,
Comes out of Babylon:
By for a patacoon-
Sir, you must buy!"
Said il Magnifico
Pulling a fico -
With a stoccado
And a gambado,
Making a wry
Face: "This corraceous
Round orchidaceous
Laceous porraceous
Fruit is a lie!
It is my friend King Pharoah's head
That nodding blew out of the Pyramid..."
The tree's small corinths
Where hard as jacinths,
For it is winter and cold winds sigh...
No nightingale
In her farthingale
Of bunched leaves let her singing die.

Rose Castles
Those bustles
Beneath parasols seen!
Fat blondine pearls
Rondine curls
Seem Banncrols sheen
The brave tartan
Waves' Spartan
Domes (Crystal Palaces)
Where like fallacies
Die the calices
Of the water-flowers green.
Said the Dean
To the Queen,
On the tartan wave seen:
"Each chilly
White lily
Has her own crinoline
And the seraphs recline
On divans divine
In a smooth seventh heaven of
polished pitch-pine."
Castellated.
Related
To castles the waves lean
Balmoral-like;
They quarrel, strike
(As round as a rondine)
With sharp towers
The water-flowers
And, floating between,
Each chatelain
In the battle slain -
Laid low by the Ondine.

When
Sir
Beelzebub called for his syllabub
in the hotel in Hell
Where Proserpine first fell,
Blue as the gendarmerie were the
waves of the sea,
(Rocking and shocking the bar-maid)
Nobody comes to give him his rum
but the
Rim of the sky hippopotamus-glum
Enhances the chances to bless with
a benison
Alfred Lord Tennyson crossing the
bar laid
With cold vegetation from pale
deputations
Of temperance workers
(all signed in Memoriam)
Hoping with glory to trip up the
Laureate's feet,
(Moving in classical metres)...
Like Balaclava, the lava came down
from the Roof, and the sea's blue
wooden gendarmerie
Took them in charge while
Beelzebub roared for his rum.
...None of them come!

In a room of the palace
Black Mrs Behemoth
Gave way to wroth
And the wildest malice.
Cried Mrs Behemoth,
"Come, come,
Come, court lady,
Doomed like a moth,
Through palace rooms shady!"
The candle flame
Seemed a yellow pompion,
Sharp as a scorpion,
Nobody came...
Only a bugbear,
Air unkind,
That bud-furred papoose,
The young spring wind,
Blew out the candle.
Where is it gone?
To flat Coromandel
Rolling on!

Rose and Alice,
Oh, the pretty lassies,
With their mouths like a calice
And their hair a golden palace-
Through my heart like a lovely
wind they blow.
Though I am black and not comely,
Though I am black as the darkest trees,
I have swarms of gold that will fly
like honey-bees,
By the rivers of the sun
I will feed my words
Until they skip like those fleeced lambs
The waterfalls, and the rivers
(horned rams),
Then for all my darkness I shall be
The peacefulness of a lovely tree-
A tree wherein the golden birds
Are singing  in the darkest branches, oh!

That hobnailed goblin,
the bob-tailed Hob,
Said, "It is time I began to rob."
For strawberries bob,
hob-nob with the pearls
Of cream
(like the curls of the dairy girls),
And flushed with the heat and
fruitish ripe
Are the gowns of the maids who
dance to the pipe.
Chase a maid?
She's afraid!
"Go gather a bob-cherry kiss from a tree,
But don't, I prithee, come
bothering me!"
She said -
As she fled.
The snouted satyrs drink clouted
cream
'Neath the chestnut-trees is thick as
a dream;
So I went
And leant,
Where none but the doltish coltish wind
Nuzzled my hand for what could find.
As I neighed
I said,
"Don't touch me, sir,
don't touch me, I say,
You'll tumble my strawberries
into the hay.
Those snow-mounds of silver that
bee, the spring,
Has sucked his sweetness from,
I will bring
With fair-haired plants and with
apples chill
For the great god Pan's high altar
...I'll spill
Not one!"
So, in fun
We rolled on the grass and began to
run
Chasing that gaudy satyr the Sun;
Over the haycocks, away we ran
Crying, "Here be berries as
sunburnt as Pan!"
But Silenus
Has seen us...
He runs like the rough satyr Sun.
Come away!

When green as a river was the barley,
Green as a river the rye,
I waded deep and began to parley
With a youth whom I heard sigh.
'I seek', said he, 'a lovely lady,
A nymph as bright as a queen,
Like a tree that drips with pearls
Her shady locks of hair were seen;
And all the rivers became her flocks
Though their wool you cannot shear,
Because of the love of her flowing locks,
The kingly sun like a swain came strong,
Unheeding of her scorn,
Wading in deeps where she has lain,
Sleeping upon her riven lawn
And chasing her starry satyr train.
She fled, and changed into a tree,
That lovely fair-haired lady...
And now I seek through
the sere summer
Where no trees are shady!'

In the early springtime after their tea,
Through the young fields of the
springing Bohea,
Jemima, Jocasta, Dina and Deb
Walked with their father
Sir Joshua Jebb -
An admiral red, whose only notion,
(A butterfly poised on a pigtailed ocean)
Is of the peruked sea whose swell
Breaks on the flowerless rocks of Hell.
Under the thin trees,
Deb and Dinah,
Jemima, Jocasta, walked, and finer
Their black hair seemed (flat-sleek to see)
Than the young leaves of the
springing Bohea;
Their cheeks were like
nutmeg-flowers when swells
The rain into foolish silver bells.
They said, "If the door you would
only slam,
Or if, Papa, you would once say "Damn" -
Instead of merely roaring "Avast"
Or boldly invoking the nautical Blast -
We should now stand
in the street of Hell
Watching siesta shutters that fell
With a noise like amber softly sliding;
Our moon-like glances through
these gliding
Would see at her table preened and set
Myrrhina sitting at her toilette
With eyelids closed as soft
as the breeze
That flows from gold flowers
on the incense-trees.

The Admiral said,
"You could never call -
I assure you it would not do at all!
She gets down from table
without saying "Please",
Forgets her prayers and to cross her Ts,
In short, her scandalous reputation
Has shocked the whole of the
Hellish nation;
And every turbaned Chinoiserie,
With whom we should sip
our black Bohea,
Would stretch out her simian
fingers thin
To scratch you, my dears, like a
mandoline;
For Hell is just as properly proper
As Greenwich, or as, Bath, or Joppa!"

Old
  Sir
   Faulk,
  Tall as a stork,
Before the honeyed fruits of dawn
were ripe, would walk,
And stalk with a gun
The reynard-coloured sun,
Among the pheasant-feathered corn
the unicorn has torn, forlorn
 the
Smock-faced sheep
Sit
 and
  sleep;
Periwigged as William and Mary, weep...
"Sally, Mary, Mattie, what's the
matter, why cry?"
The huntsman and the reynard-
coloured sun and I sigh;
"Oh, the nursery-maid Meg
With a leg like a peg
Chased the feathered dreams like
hens, And when they laid an egg
In the sheepskin
Meadows
Where
The serene King James would steer
Horse and hounds, then he
From the shade of a tree
Picked it up as spoil to boil for
nursery tea", said the mourners.
In the
Corn, towers strain,
Feathered tall as a crane,
And whistling down the feathered
rain, Old Noah goes again -
An old dull mome
With a head like a pome,
Seeing the world as a bare egg,
Laid by the feathered air: Meg
Would beg three of these
For the nursery teas
Of Japhet, Shem and Ham,
she gave it
Underneath the trees,
Where the boiling
 Water,
  Hissed,
Like the goose-king's feathered
daughter-kissed,
Pot and pan and copper kettle
Put upon their proper mettle,
Lest the Flood - the Flood - The
Flood begin again through these!

Gone the saturnalia sighing, dying,
Shone the leaves' regalia, maddened
with the flying
Hooves, the glittering leaves seem
Faces in a dim dream,
Satyrine the leaves gleam
At the dreams of dying.
Pierrot's mask is whitened,
Long-nosed frightened;
Rags tragi-comical,
Flags plano-conical,
Tags histrionical,
All histrionical,
Form acronomical
Falls - lies sprawling.
Cannibal, the sun, blared down
upon the shrunken
Heads, the drums of skin, the sin -
The dead men drunken,
Through the canvas slum come
Bunches of taut nerves, dance,
Caper through the slum, prance
Like paper blowing.
Lying in the deep mud under
tumbrils rolling,
The dead men drunken, tossed and
lost, and sprawling
The trumpets calling
From Hell's pits falling
The crowd seas tumble
And Death's drums rumble.
White as a winding sheet,
Masks blowing down the street:
Moscow, Paris  London, Vienna-
all are undone.
The drums of death are mumbling,
rumbling, and tumbling ,
Mumbling, rumbling, and tumbling,
The world's floors are quaking,
crumbling and breaking.

Long steel grass -
The white soldiers pass -
The light is braying like an ass.
See
The tall Spanish jade
With hair black as night-shade
Worn as a cockade!
Flee
Her eyes' gasconade
And her gown's parade
(As stiff as a brigade!)
Tee-hee!
The hard and braying light
Is zebra'd black and white
It will take away the slight
And free,
Tinge of the mouth organ sound,
(Oyster-stall notes) oozing round
Her flounces as they sweep the ground.
The
Trumpet and the drum
And the martial cornet come
To make the people dumb -
But we
Won't wait for sly-foot night
(Moonlight, watered milk-white, bright)
To make clear the declaration
Of our Paphian vocation
Beside the castanetted sea,
Where stalks Il Capitaneo
Swaggart braggadocio
Sword and moustacio - He
Is green as a cassada
And his hair is an armada.
To the jade: "Come kiss me harder"
He called across the battlements as she
Heard our voices thin and shrill
As the steely grasses' thrill,
Or the sound of the onycha
When the phoca has the pica
In the palace of the Queen Chinee!

I

The houses on a seesaw rush
In the giddy sun's hard spectrum, push

The noisy heat's machinery;
Like flags of colored heat they fly.

The wooden ripples of the smiles
Suck down the houses, then at whiles,

Grown suctioned like an octopus,
They throw them up against us,

As we rush by on coloured bars
Of sense, vibrating flower-hued stars,

With lips like velvet drinks and winds
That bring strange Peris to our minds.

II

Seas are roaring like a lion; with their
Wavy flocks Zion,
Noses like a scimitar,
Hair a brassy bar
Come
to
The sun's drum. Though
Light green water's swim their
daughters, lashing
with their eel-sleek-locks
The furred
Heads
Of mermaids that occurred,
Sinking to the cheap beds.
Blurred
Legs, like trunks of tropical
Plants, rise up and, over all.
Green as a conservatory
Is the light..........another story..........
It has grown too late for life!
Put on your gloves and take a drive!

Sailors come
To the drum
Out of Babylon;
Hobby-horses
Foam, the dumb
Sky rhinoceros-glum

Watched the courses of the
breakers' rocking-horses and with
Glaucis,
Lady Venus on the settee of the
horsehair sea!
Where Lord Tennyson in laurels
wrote a gloria free,
In a borealic iceberg came Victoria; she
Knew Prince Albert's tall memorial
took the colours of the floreal
And the borealic iceberg; floating
on they see
New-arisen Madam Venus for
whose sake from far
Came the fat zebra'd emperor
from Zanzibar
Where like golden bouquets lay far
Asia, Africa, Cathay,
All laid before that shady lady by
the fibroid Shah.
Captain Fracasse stout as any water -
butt came, stood
With Sir Bacchus both a-drinking
the black tarr'd grapes' blood
Plucked among the tartan leafage
By the furry wind whose grief age
Could not wither -
like a squirrel with a gold star-nut.
Queen Victoria sitting shocked
upon a rocking horse
Of a wave said to the Laureate,
"This minx of course
Is as sharp as a lynx and blacker -
deeper than the drinks and
quite as
Hot as any Hottentot, without
remorse!
For the minx,"
Said she,
"And the drinks,
You can see
Are hot as any hottentot and not
the goods for me!"

Green wooden leaves clap fight away,
Severely practical, as they

Shelter the children, candy-pale,
The chestnut-candles flicker, fail......

The showman's face is cubed clear as
The shapes reflected in a glass

Of water - (glog, glut, a ghost's speech
Fumbling for space from each to each).

The fusty showman fumbles, must
Fit in a particle of dust

The universe, for fear it gain
Its freedom from my box of brain.

Yet dust hears seeds that grow to grace
Behind my crude-striped wooden face.

As I, a puppet tinsel-pink,
Leap on my springs, learn how to think,

Then like the trembling golden stalk
Of some long-petalled star, I walk

Through the dark heavens until dew
Falls on my eyes and sense thrills through.

Jane, Jane
Tall as a crane,
The morning  light creaks down again;

Comb your cockscomb-ragged hair,
Jane, Jane, Come down the stair.

Each dull blunt wooden stalactite
Of rain creaks, hardened by the light,

Sounding like an overtone
From some lonely world unknown.

But the creaking empty light
Will never harden into sight,

Will never penetrate your brain
With overtoncs like the blunt rain,

The light would show
(if it could harden)
Eternities of kitchen garden,

Cockscomb flowers
that none will pluck,
And wooden flowers
that 'gin to cluck.

In the kitchen you must light
Flames as staring, red and white,

As carrots or as turnips, shining
Where the old dawn light lies whining

Cockscomb hair on the cold wind
Hangs limp,
turns the milk's weak mind...
Jane, Jane,
Tall as a crane,
The morning light
creaks down again!

Baskets of ripe fruit in air
The bird-songs seem, suspended where

Between the hairy leaves trills dew,
All tasting of fresh green anew.

Ma'am, I've heard your laughter flare
Through  your waspish-gilded hair:

Feathered masks
Pots of peas,
Janus asks
Naught of these
Creaking water
Brightly stripèd,
No, I've caught her -
Shrieking biped.
Flute sounds jump
And turn together
Changing clumps
Of glassy feather.
In among the
Pots of peas
Naiad changes -
Quick as these.

Came the great Popinjay
Smelling his nosegay:
In cages like grots,
The bird sang gavottes.
"Herodiade's flea
Was named sweet Amanda.
She danced like a lady
From here to Uganda.
Oh, what a dance was there!
Long-haired, the candle
Salome-like tossed her hair
To a dance tune by Handel"...
Dance they still? Then came
Courtier Death
Blew out the candle flame
With civet breath.

"We bear velvet cream.
Green and babyish
Small leaves seem; each stream
Horses' tails that swish,

And the chimes remind
Us of sweet birds singing,
Like the Jangling bells,
On rose trees ringing.

Man must say farewells
To parents now,
And to William Tell
And to Mrs Cow.

Man must say farewells
To storks and Bettes,
And to roses, 'bells,
And statuettes,

Forests white and black
In spring are blue
With forget-me-nots,
And to lovers true

Still the sweet bird begs
And tries to cozen
Them:  -- Buy angels' eggs
Sold by the dozen. -- 

Gone are clouds like inns
On the gardens' brinks,
And the mountain  djinns,-
Ganymede sells drinks;

While the days seem grey,
And his heart of ice,
Grey as chamois, or
The edelweiss,

And the mountain streams
Like cowbells sound-
Tirra lirra, drowned
In the waiter's dreams

Who has gone beyond
The forest waves,
While his true and fond
Ones seek their graves."

Jumbo asleep!
Grey leaves thick-furred
As his ears keep
Conversations blurred.
Thicker than hide
Is the trumpeting water;
Don Pasquito's bride
And his youngest daughter
Watch the leaves
Elephantine grey:
What is it grieves
In the torrid day?
Is it the animal
World that snores
Harsh and inimical
In sleepy pores?-
And why should the spined flowers
red as a soldier
Make Don Pasquito
Seem still mouldier?

Across the thick and the pastel snow
Two people go...
"And do you remember
When last we wandered this shore?"
... "Ah, No!
For it is cold-hearted December."
"Dead, the leaves that like asses' ears
hung on the trees
When last we wandered and
squandered joy here;
Now Midas your husband
will listen for these
Whispers - these tears for joy's bier..."
And as they walk,
they seem tall pagodas;
And all the ropes
let down from the cloud
Ring the hard cold bell-buds upon
the trees-codas
Of overtones ecstasies,
grown for love's shroud.

Ratatantan, ratatantan, ratatantan:
The marshal's harrier
Bites arid fights
The water carrier.
Mossed as a druid,
Under the wall
Thin waters fall
And turn into fluid
Petals of tulips, and hard regalias
Of lilies and dahlias.
Then, as they brawl,
Jupiter leaned from his vast snow cage,
Cuffed the marshal's harrier -
Still in a rage he bites and fights
The wall grown mouldier,
Where stiff as a soldier
Stands the breeze,
Like a handy andy,
And words they bandy
Under the dandy
Dinmont trees.

"What are you staring at, mariner man
Wrinkled as sea-sand and old as the sea?"
"Those trains will run over their tails,
if they can,
Snorting and sporting like porpoises. Flee
The burly, the whirligig wheels of the train.
As round as the world
and as large again,
Running half the way
over to Babylon, down
Through fields of clover
to gay Troy town-
A-puffing their smoke
as grey as the curl
On my forehead as wrinkled as
sands of the sea!-
But what can that matter
to you, my girl?
(And what can that matter to me?)"

God Pluto is a kindly man;
the children ran:
"Come help us with the games
our dames ban."
He drinks his beer
and builds his forge,
as red as George
The Fourth his face is that flames tan.
Like baskets of ripe fruit
the bird-songs' oaten flutes
All honeyed yellow sound in air, where
Among the hairy leaves fall trills of
dew and sheaves
Are tasting of fresh green anew. Flare
His flames as tall
As Windsor Castle, all
Balmoral was not higher;
Like feathered masks and peas
in pots and castled trees
Walled gardens of the seas,
the flames seemed all of these.
As red and green as
Petticoats of queens
Among the flowering
Beans they
Bloom... "Come rest and be!
I care for nobody, nobody, not I,
the world can be -
and no one cares for me!"
In the lane, Hattie
Meddlesome Mattie,
Suddenly quarrel.
Flames like Balmoral
From feathered doxies
Blow up like boxes,
Cram full of matches, -
Each yells and scratches.
Flames green and yellow spirt from
lips and eyes and skirt,
The leaves like chestnut
horses' ears rear.
Ladies, though my forge has made
me red as George
The Fourth, Such flames we know
not here, dear!

Cried the navy-blue ghost
of Mr. Belaker
The allegro negro cocktail-shaker:
Why did the cock crow,
Why am I lost
Down the endless road
to Infinity toss'd'?
The tropical leaves
are whispering white as water:
I race the wind in my flight down
the promenade, -
Edging the far-off sand
Is the foam of the sirens'
Metropole and Grand,-
As I raced through the leaves
as white as water
My ghost flowed over a nursemaid,
caught her,
And there I saw the long grass weep,
Where tile guinea-fowl plumaged
houses sleep
And the sweet ring-doves
of curded milk
Watch the Infanta's gown of silk
the ghost-room tall
where the governante
Whispers slyly fading andante
In at the window then looked he,
The navy-blue ghost of Mr. Belaker,
The allegro negro cocktail-shaker,-
And his flattened face like the moon
saw she,-
Rhinoceros-black yet flowing like
the sea.

Madam Mouse trots,
Gray in the black night!
Madam Mouse trots:
Furred is the light.
The elephant-trunks
Trumpet from the sea....
Gray in the black night
The mouse trots free.
Hoarse as a dog's bark
The heavy leaves are furled....
The cat's in his cradle,
All's well with the World!

The octogenarian
Leaned from his window,
To the valerian
Growing below
Said, "My nightcap
Is only the gap
In the thrembling thorn
Where the mild unicorn
With the little Infanta
Danced the lavolta
(Clapping hands: molto
Lent' eleganta)."
The man with the lanthorn
Peers high and low;
No more
Than a snore
As he walks to and fro...
Il Dottore the stoic
Culls silver herb
Benath the superb
Vast moon azoic.

The currants moonwhite
as Mother Bunch
In their thick-bustled leaves were
laughing like Punch;
And, ruched as their country waterfalls,
The cherried maids walk beneath
the dark walls.
Where the moonlight was falling
thick as curd
Through the cherry-branches
half-unheard
Said old Mrs. Bunch,
the crop-eared owl,
To her gossip:
"If once I began to howl,
I am sure that my sobs would
drown the seas -
With my "oh's and my ah's"
and my "oh dear me's!"
Everything wrong
from cradle to grave -
No money to spend,
no Money to save!"
And the currant-bush began to rustle
As poor Mrs. Bunch arranged her bustle.

"Tra la la la la la la la
La!

See me dance the polka",
Said Mr Wagg like a bear,
"with my top hat
And my whiskers that -
(Tra la la) trap the Fair."
Where the waves
seem chiming haycocks
I dance the polka; there
Stand Venus' children in their gay frocks, -
Maroon and marine, - and stare
To see me fire my pistol
Through the distance blue as my coat;
Like Wellington, Byron, the
Marquis of Bristol,
Busbied great trees float.

While the wheezing hurdy-gurdy
Of the marine wind blows me
To the tune of Annie Rooney, sturdy,
Over the sheafs of the sea;

And bright as a seedsman's packet
With zinnias, candytufts chill,
Is Mrs. Marigold's Jacket
As she gapes at the inn door still,

Where at dawn in the box of the sailor,
Blue as the decks of the sea,
Nelson awoke crowed like the cocks,
Then back to the dust sank he.

And Robinson Crusoe
Rues so
The bright and foxy beer, -
But he finds fresh isles
in a negress' smiles, -
The poxy doxy dear,

As they, watch me dance the polka",
Said MrWagg like a bear,
"In my top hat and my whiskers that, -
Tra la la, trap the Fair,
Tra la la la la la -
Tra la la la la la -
Tra la la la la la la la
    La     La     La!"

Said King Pompey,
the emperor's ape
Shuddering black in his
temporal cape
Of dust: "The dust is everything -
The heart to love
And the voice to sing
Indianapolis,
And the Acropolis,
Also the hairy sky that  we
Take for a coverlet comfortably." ...
Said the Bishop
Eating his ketchup
"There still remains Eternity
(Swelling the diocese) -
That elephantiasis
The flunkeyed and trumpeting Sea!"

Lily O'Grady,
Silly and shady,
Longing to be
A lazy lady,
Walked by the cupolas gables in the
Lake's Georgian stables,
In a fairy tale like the heat intense,
And the mist in the woods when
across the fence
The children gathering strawberries
Are changed by the heat into
negresses,
Though their fair hair
Shines there
Like gold-haired planets, Calliope, Io,
Pomona, Antiope, Echo and Clio.
Then Lily O'Grady,
Silly and shady,
Sauntered along like a
Lazy Lady;
Beside the waves' haycocks her
gown with tucks
as of satin the colour of shining
green ducks,
And her fol-de-rol
Parasol
Was a great gold sun o'er the
haycocks shining,
But she was a negress black as the shade
That time on the brightest lady laid.
Then a satyr, dog-haired as
trunks of trees,
Began to flatter, began to tease
And she ran like the nymphs with
golden foot
That trampled the strawberry,
buttercup root,
In the thick cold dew as bright as
the mesh
Of dead Panope's golden flesh,
Made from the music whence were born
Memphis and Thebes in the first
hot morn,
- And ran, to wake
In the lake,
Where the water-ripples seem hay to rake.
And Charlotine,
Adeline,
Round rose-bubbling Victorine,
And the other fish
Express a wish
For mastic mantles and gowns with
a swish;
And bright and slight as the posies
Of buttercups and of roses,
And buds of the wild wood-lilies
They chase her, as frisky as fillies.
The red retriever-haired satyr
Can whine and tease her and flatter
But Lily O'Grady,
Silly and shady,
In the deep shade is a lazy lady;
Now Pompey's dead, Homer's read,
Heliogabalus lost his head,
And shade is on the brightest wing,
And dust forbids the bird to sing.

By the blue wooden sea-
Curling laboriously,
Coral and amber grots
(Cherries and apricots)
Ribbons of noisy heat
Binding them head and feet,
Horses as fat as plums
Snort as each bumpkin comes.
Giggles like towers of glass
(Pink and blue spirals) pass,
Oh how the Vacancy
Laughed at them rushing by.
"Turn again, flesh and brain,
Only yourselves again!
How far above the ape
Differing in each shape,
You with your regular
Meaningless circles are!"

Where the satyrs are chattering,
nymphs with their flattering
Glimpse of the forest enhance
All the beauty of marrow and
cucumber narrow
And Ceres will join in the dance.
Where the satyrs can flatter
the flat-leaved fruit
And the gherkin green
and the marrow,
Said Queen Venus,
"Silenus, we'll settle between us
The gourd and the cucumber narrow!"
See, like palaces hid in the lake,
they shake -
Those greenhouses shot
by her arrow narrow!
The gardener seizes the pieces, like
Croesus, for gilding the
potting-shed barrow.
There the radish roots,
And the strawberry fruits
Feel the nymphs' high boots
in the glade.
Trampling and sampling mazurkas,
cachucas and turkas,
Cracoviaks hid in the shade.
Where, in the haycocks,
the Country nymphs' gay flocks
Wear gowns that are looped over
bright yellow petticoats,
Gaiters of leather
and pheasants' tail feathers
In straw hats bewildering many
a leathern bat.
There they haymake,
Cowers and whines in showers
The dew in the dogskin bright flowers;
Pumpkin and marrow
And cucumber narrow
Have grown through
the spangled June hours.
Melons as dark as caves have for
their fountain waves
Thickest gold honey.
And wrinkled as dark as Pan,
Or old Silenus, yet youthful as Venus
Are gourds and the wrinkled figs
Whence all the jewels ran.
Said QueenVenus, 'Silenus
We'll settle between us
The nymphs' disobedience, forestall
With my bow and my quiver
Each fresh evil liver:
For I don't understand it at all!'

Castles of crystal.
Castles of wood,
Moving on pulleys
just as you should!
See the gay people
Flaunting like flags,
Bells in the steeple,
Sky all in rags.
Bright as a parrot
Flaunts the gay heat -
Songs in the garret,
Fruit in the street;
Plump as a cherry,
Red as a rose,
Old Mother Berry -
Blowing her nose!

Daisy and Lily,
Lazy and silly,
Walk by the shore of the wan grassy sea,-
Talking once more 'neath a swan-
bosomed tree.
Rose castles
Tourelles
Those bustles
Where swells
Each foam-bell of ermine
They roam and determine
What fashions have been and what
fashions will be,-
What tartan leaves born,
What Crinolines worn.

By Queen Thetis,
Pelisses
Of tarlatine blue,
Like the thin Plaided leaves that the
Castle crags grew,
Or velours d'Afrande:
On the water-god's land
Her hair seemed gold trees on the
honey-cell sand
When the thickest gold spangles,
on deep water seen,
Were like twanging guitar and like
cold mandoline,
And the nymphs of great caves,
With hair like gold waves,
Of Venus, wore tarlatiine
Louise and Charlottine
(Borea's daughters)
And the nymphs of deep waters,
The nymph Taglioni, Grisi the ondine
Wear Plaided Victoria and thin
Clementine
Like the crinolined waterfalls;
Wood-nymphs wear bonnets,
shawls,
Elegant  parasols
Floating are seen.
The Amazones wear balzarine of
jonquille

Besides  the blond lace of a deep-
falling rill;
Through glades like a nun
They run from and shun
The enormous and gold-rayed
rustling sun;
And the nymphs of the fountains
Descend from the mountains
Like elegant willows
On their deep barouche pillows,
In cashmere Alvandar, barege Isabelle
Like bells of bright water from
clearest wood-well.
Our elegantes favouring
bonnets of blond,
The stars in their apiaries,
Sylphs in their aviaries,
Seeing them, spangle these,
and the sylphs fond
From their aviaries fanned
With each long fluid hand
The manteaux espagnoles,
Mimic the waterfalls
Over the long  and the light summer land.
...
So Daisy and Lily,
Lazy and silly
Walk by the shore of the wan grassy Sea,
Talking once more 'neath a swan-
bosomed tree.
Row Castles,
Tourelles,
Those bustles!
Mourelles
Of their shade in their train follow.
Ladies, how vain,  - hollow, -
Gone is the sweet swallow, -
Gone, Philomel!"