SONG SUPPOSED TO BE SUNG BY MR. BURNE-JONES.
"Come into my studio Maud,
If you've chalk'd your face, my own;
Come into my studio, Maud,
I am here at the easel alone;
And the pot-pourri's odour is wafted abroad,
And the scent of the patchouli blown.
"For I've shut the bright morning out,
With a saffron yellow blind;
And I've thrown my brick-dust velvet about,
And the sage-green curtain untwined;
So haste, my darling, the sun to flout
In your rust-red robe enshrined.
"All night, as you may have heard,
I've toss'd in a fantaisie,
Whether to paint my dear little bird
As a 'Nocturne' or 'Symphony;'
But now I have pass'd my æsthetic word,
An 'arrangement' you are to be.
"I said to the corpse: 'There is to be one
Who'll be ghastly as your cold clay;
Aye, bluer than you before I have done,
And with hair like glorified hay.'
Come, Maud, it is time that we had begun,
So hasten, my love, I pray,
Or we shan't be able to keep out the sun;
Don't bismuth yourself all day.
"I said to our surgeon: 'You often go
Where women suffer and pine,
But I bet that a painted face I'll show
Of a love-sick model of mine,
That will beat them all for hopeless woe
And cadaverous design!
"And our surgeon said, 'No doubt you will,
For the epicene women you paint
Are bilious ghosts in want of a pill,
With undoubted strumous taint;
So hollow-eyed and cheek'd, no skill
Could save them from feeling faint.'
"Queen Corpse of my graveyard garden of girls,
Come hither, o'er carpets dun,
In your rust-red robe and you're soot-black pearls;
Queen, spectre, and corpse in one!
Shine out, corpse candles, above her curls,
And be the picture's sun!
"Oh, come! for I've managed to mix
A charnel-house-ish hue;
Oh, come! that your lord may fix
This cholera-morbus blue!
The patchouli whispers: 'She's near, she's near!'
And her musk-drops say: ''Tis true!'
And the creak of her slippers, I hear, I hear,
They're the colour of liquid glue.
"She is coming, my bilious sweet;
I can see her tawny head;
Her footsteps are far from fleet,
She's tied back till she scarce can tread;
But yet shall her face yours meet,
When the months of the winter have fled,
On the walls of the Grosvenor hung complete
In dissecting-room blue and red!"
Truth, December 26, 1878.