THE stars were like prunes . . . Wrinkled, the winter breeze. In nightgowns buffoons Wrote dusty lampoons. "Where is Sir Plato And where is Queen Anne? Forgotten like Cato! Less than a man Is now that disaster, The mage Zoroaster Who could not survive our runes, our lampoons, Withered as stars that are darker than prunes!" . . . Blown along in her palanquin, Tattered and thin, In her quilted red satin, Miss Pekoe reads Latin. Like sequins From Pekin's Treasuries these Eyes of Miss Pekoe; Illogicalisms Her limbs, and an echo Her face; syllogisms Her hat. Astronomical Trees where swoons The breeze, hide coxcombical Lanthorn moons Set in the trees Like bird-lime. The third time, An old buffoon croons To a fluttering moth: "Dust is the cloth That made Cleopatra, And every peninsular House; dark Sumatra, Miss Pekoe grown insular, The saturnine asinine bray of the seas!" | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MODERN LOVE: 30 by GEORGE MEREDITH INSULTING BEAUTY by JOHN WILMOT WOMEN'S WAR THOUGHTS by MARY HUNTER AUSTIN |