Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SOME PENCIL-PICTURES: TAKE AT SARATOGA, by JOHN GODFREY SAXE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SOME PENCIL-PICTURES: TAKE AT SARATOGA, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Your novel-writers make their ladies tall
Last Line: The dearest objects of their fondest pride!
Subject(s): Beauty; Saratoga, New York; Women


I.

YOUR novel-writers make their ladies tall;
I mean their heroines; as if, indeed,
It were a fatal failing to be small.
In this, I own, we are not well agreed, --
I like a little woman, if she's pretty,
Modest and clever, sensible and witty.

II.

And such is she who sits beside me; fair
As her deportment; mine is not the pen
To paint the glory of her Saxon hair,
And eyes of heavenly azure! There are men
Who doat on raven tresses, and are fond
Of dark complexions, -- I adore a blonde!

III.

There sits a woman of another type:
Superb in figure and of stately size;
An Amazonian beauty round and ripe
As Cytherea, -- with delicious eyes
That laugh or languish with a shifting hue
Somewhat between a hazel and a blue.

IV.

Across the room -- to please a daintier taste --
A slender damsel flits with fairy tread;
A lover's hand might span her little waist,
If so inclined, -- that is, if they were wed.
Some youths admire those fragile forms, I've heard;
I never saw the man, upon my word!

V.

But styles of person, though they please me more
(As Nature's work), excite my wonder less
Than all my curious vision may explore
In moods and manners, equipage and dress;
The last alone were theme enough, indeed,
For more than I could write, or you would read.

VI.

Swift satirized mankind with little ruth,
And womankind as well; but we must own
His words of censure oft are very truth, --
For instance, where the satirist has shown
How -- thankless for the gifts which they have got --
All strive to show the talents they -- have not!

VII.

Thus (it is written) Frederick the Great
Cared little for the battles he had fought,
But listened eagerly and all-elate
To hear a courtier praise the style and thought
That graced his Sonnets; though, in fact, his verse
(I've tried to read it) could n't well be worse!

VIII.

The like absurd ambition you may note
In fashionable women. Look you there!
Observe an arm which all (but she) must vote
Extremely ugly; so she keeps it bare
(Lest so much beauty should escape the light)
From wrist to shoulder, morning, noon, and night!

IX.

Observe again (the girl who stands alone)
How Pride reveals what Prudence would suppress;
A mere anatomy of skin-and-bone, --
She wears, perversely, a decolleto dress!
Those tawny angles seek no friendly screen,
But court the day, and glory to be seen!

X.

O Robert Burns! if such a thing might be,
That all by ignorance or folly blind,
For once should "see themselves as others see"
(As thou didst pray for hapless human kind),
What startled crowds would madly rush to hide
The dearest objects of their fondest pride!





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