Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TWO PROMENADES SENTIMENTALES: 2. PROFESSOR SPEAKS, by EDITH SITWELL


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TWO PROMENADES SENTIMENTALES: 2. PROFESSOR SPEAKS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: One time when the cold red winter sun
Last Line: Of ivory, scentless flowers are born.


ONE time when the cold red winter sun
Like a Punch and Judy show shrilled in fun

And scattered down its green perfume
Like the dust that drifts from the green lime-bloom,

I sat at my dressing-table -- that chilly
Palely crinolined water-lily

And watched my face as spined and brittle
As the tall fish, tangled in a little

Dark weed, that sea-captains keep
In bottles and perpetual sleep.

My face seemed the King of Spain's dry map
All seamed with gold . . . no one cared a rap

As I walked on the grass, like the sheepish buds
Of wool that grow on lambs chewing their cuds.

The small flowers grew to a hairy husk
That holds Eternity for its musk

And the satyr's daughter came: I saw
She was golden as Venus' castle of straw,

And the curls round her golden fruit-face shine
Like black ivy-berries that will not make wine.

With my black cloak -- (a three-tiered ship on the main)
And my face like the map of the King of Spain,

Beneath the boughs where like ragged goose-plumes
Of the snow hang the spring's first chilly blooms,

I swept on towards her; my foot with the gout
Clattered like satyr-hoofs, put her to rout,

For she thought that I was the satyr-king . . .
So she fled like the goat-legged wind of spring

Across the sea that was green as grass,
Where bird-soft archipelagos pass --

To where like golden bouquets lay
Asia, Africa, and Cathay.

And now the bird-soft light and shade
Touches me not; I promenade

Where rain falls with tinkling notes, and cold,
Like the castanet-sound of the thinnest gold

In chessboard gardens where, knight and pawn
Of ivory, scentless flowers are born.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net