Were not so strange as before, so incomprehensible purely;
Still, as before (and as now), balls, dances, and evening parties,
Shooting with bows, going shopping together, and hearing them singing,
Dangling beside them, and turning the leaves on the dreary piano,
Offering unneeded arms, performing dull farces of escort,
Seemed like a sort of unnatural up-in-the-air balloon-work
(Or what to me is as hateful, a riding about in a carriage),
Utter removal from work, mother earth, and the objects of living.
Hungry and fainting for food, you ask me to join you in snapping—
What but a pink-paper comfit, with motto romantic inside it?