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