Classic and Contemporary Poetry
BUCOLIC COMEDY: PLATITUDES, by EDITH SITWELL Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: The news of queen anne's death comes to arouse Last Line: "of the snow that is cold as a nectarine!" | ||||||||
THE news of Queen Anne's death comes to arouse The Dead, in the quilted red satin house Where the country gentlemen from their birth Like kind red strawberries root in earth. Then weeping come the dairy girls With their ivy curls and their cheeks like pearls; They leave the cheese and they leave the milk That Pan will steal -- it is white as silk. Peruked waves curl and break a splinter From the flat pearled shore of winter; And candle-flames bob like strawberries low Over the thick and the cream-like snow; While the dairy girls weep; "Who cares," they said, "If old and cross Queen Anne be dead?" They wept, "She lies in her palace chamber Embalmed in the cold, like a wasp in amber, While a fawning courtier-like air roves In among the dark shadow-groves. . . . And dead is our faun who loved the sheen Of the snow that is cold as a nectarine!" | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...BUCOLIC COMEDY: EARLY SPRING by EDITH SITWELL BUCOLIC COMEDY: FLEECING TIME by EDITH SITWELL BUCOLIC COMEDY: FOX TROT by EDITH SITWELL BUCOLIC COMEDY: KING COPHETUA AND THE BEGGAR MAID by EDITH SITWELL BUCOLIC COMEDY: SERENADE by EDITH SITWELL BUCOLIC COMEDY: SPINNING SONG by EDITH SITWELL BUCOLIC COMEDY: SPRING by EDITH SITWELL BUCOLIC COMEDY: THE BEAR by EDITH SITWELL BUCOLIC COMEDY: THE DOLL by EDITH SITWELL BUCOLIC COMEDY: THE FOX; FOR ANN PEARN by EDITH SITWELL BUCOLIC COMEDY: WHY by EDITH SITWELL ELEGY: THE GHOST WHOSE LIPS WERE WARM; FOR GEOFFREY GORER by EDITH SITWELL |
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