UNE MARQUISE And La Vallière's yeux veloutés Followed these; And you liked it, when he said it (On his knees), And you kept it, and you read it, "Belle Marquise!" III Yet with us your toilet graces Fail to please, And the last of your last faces, And your mise; For we hold you just as real, "Belle Marquise!" As your Bergers and Bergères, Calm and ease, As the Venus there, by Coustou, Is to her the gods were used to,— Sprung from seas. You are just a porcelain trifle, "Belle Marquise!" Just a thing of puffs and patches, Made for madrigals and catches, Not for heart-wounds, but for scratches, O Marquise ! Just a pinky porcelain trifle, "Belle Marquise!" Wrought in rarest rose-Dubarry, No, Marquise! IV For your Cupid, you have clipped him, Rouged and patched him, nipped and snipped him, And with chapeau-bras equipped him, "Belle Marquise!” Just to arm you through your wife-time, And the languors of your life-time, "Belle Marquise!" Say, to trim your toilet tapers, Or, to twist your hair in papers, Or, to wean you from the vapours ; As for these, You are worth the love they give you, Or a younger grace shall please; "Belle Marquise !" Till your frothed-out life's commotion Or a dainty sham devotion, "Belle Marquise !" UNE MARQUISE V No: we neither like nor love you, "Belle Marquise !” Lesser lights we place above you,— Without malice whatsoever,- Just one little thought, Marquise ! "Belle Marquise!" THE STORY OF ROSINA AN INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF FRANÇOIS BOUCHER "On ne badine pas avec l'amour.” THE scene, a wood. A shepherd tip-toe creeping, Carries a basket, whence a billet peeps, To lay beside a silk-clad Oread sleeping Under an urn; yet not so sound she sleeps But that she plainly sees his graceful act; "He thinks she thinks he thinks she sleeps," in fact. One hardly needs the "Peint par François Boucher." All the sham life comes back again,-one sees Alcoves, Ruelles, the Lever, and the Coucher, Patches and Ruffles, Roues and Marquises; The little great, the infinite small thing That ruled the hour when Louis Quinze was king. THE STORY OF ROSINA For these were yet the days of halcyon weather,— A "Martin's summer," when the nation swam, Aimless and easy as a wayward feather, Down the full tide of jest and epigram ;A careless time, when France's bluest blood Beat to the tune of "After us the Flood." Plain Roland still was placidly "inspecting," Corday unborn, and Lamballe in Savoie ; And far afield were sun-baked savage creatures, Female and male, that tilled the earth, and wrung Want from the soil;-lean things with livid features, Shape of bent man, and voice that never sung: These were the Ants, for yet to Jacques Bonhomme Tumbrils were not, nor any sound of drum. But Boucher was a Grasshopper, and painted,Rose-water Raphael,-en couleur de rose, The crowned Caprice, whose sceptre, nowise sainted, Swayed the light realm of ballets and bonmots ; Ruled the dim boudoir's demi-jour, or drove Pink-ribboned flocks through some pink-flowered grove. |