Yeux Glauques
Gladstone was still respected,
When John Ruskin produced
‘King’s Treasuries’; Swinburne
And Rossetti still abused.
Foetid 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.
