MANES À LA MODE.
(A vision suggested by the inspiriting rumour that green hair is about to become fashionable.)
In Springtide when the copses stir
And hawthorn buds on boughs are seen,
My love shall seek the hairdresser
And have her hair dyed green.
Gay priestess of a Dryad cult
With leaf-like locks she'll haunt the trees,
Securing this superb result
With Boffkin's verdigris.
And feathered songsters all secure,
The merle, the lark, shall come and sit
Amongst her emerald chevelure
And build their nests in it.
But when sweet Maytime draws to close
Neaera still shall mark the date;
She'll steal the red fires of the rose
And daub them on her pate.
The ensanguined peonies shall grudge
Her flaming top-knot's stolen hue
(The bill shall come from Messrs. Fudge,
"To tincture, Two Pound Two").
And bees and wasps to sip its bloom
Shall buzz about that glorious tire
And, having sipped, shall feel a gloom
And painfully expire.
Sad Autumn shall arrive, and still
To suit the note the glades have struck,
Moat sweetly shall Neaera swill
Her poll with barber's muck.
And now with gold and purple glow,
Now russet and now rather wan,
Weekly her scalp shall undergo
Some transformation.
Till lastly, when by chymic jolt
And sheer corrosion of the thatch,
What time the withering woodlands moult
My love shall moult to match,
And all those curls I loved to beg
For keepsakes on the earth be strewed,
Leaving her cranium like an egg
Incomparably nude.
What matter? She can start again
And ape the season's altering rigs
More simply, having lost her mane,
With repertoires of wigs.
Evoe.