For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books.
YEUX GLAUQUES
GLADSTONE was still respected,
When John Ruskin produced
“Kings’ Treasuries”; Swinburne
And Rossetti still abused.
Fœtid Buchanan lifted up his voice
When that faun’s head of hers
Became a pastime for
Painters and adulterers.
The Burne-Jones cartons
Have preserved her eyes;
Still, at the Tate, they teach
Cophetua to rhapsodize;
Thin like brook-water,
With a vacant gaze.
The English Rubaiyat was still-born
In those days.
The thin, clear gaze, the same
Still darts out faun-like from the half-ruin’d face,
Questing and passive....
“Ah, poor Jenny’s case” ...
Bewildered that a world
Shows no surprise
At her last maquero’s
Adulteries.
“SIENA MI FE’; DISFEÇEMI
MAREMMA”
AMONG the pickled fœtuses and bottled bones,
Engaged in perfecting the catalogue,
I found the last scion of the
Senatorial families of Strasbourg, Monsieur Verog.