Popular Song

Lily O'Grady,

Silly and shady,

Longing to be

A lazy lady,

Walked by the cupolas gables in the

Lake's Georgian stables,

In a fairy tale like the heat intense,

And the mist in the woods when

across the fence

The children gathering strawberries

Are changed by the heat into

negresses,

Though their fair hair

Shines there

Like gold-haired planets, Calliope, Io,

Pomona, Antiope, Echo and Clio.

Then Lily O'Grady,

Silly and shady,

Sauntered along like a

Lazy Lady;

Beside the waves' haycocks her

gown with tucks

as of satin the colour of shining

green ducks,

And her fol-de-rol

Parasol

Was a great gold sun o'er the

haycocks shining,

But she was a negress black as the shade

That time on the brightest lady laid.

Then a satyr, dog-haired as

trunks of trees,

Began to flatter, began to tease

And she ran like the nymphs with

golden foot

That trampled the strawberry,

buttercup root,

In the thick cold dew as bright as

the mesh

Of dead Panope's golden flesh,

Made from the music whence were born

Memphis and Thebes in the first

hot morn,

- And ran, to wake

In the lake,

Where the water-ripples seem hay to rake.

And Charlotine,

Adeline,

Round rose-bubbling Victorine,

And the other fish

Express a wish

For mastic mantles and gowns with

a swish;

And bright and slight as the posies

Of buttercups and of roses,

And buds of the wild wood-lilies

They chase her, as frisky as fillies.

The red retriever-haired satyr

Can whine and tease her and flatter

But Lily O'Grady,

Silly and shady,

In the deep shade is a lazy lady;

Now Pompey's dead, Homer's read,

Heliogabalus lost his head,

And shade is on the brightest wing,

And dust forbids the bird to sing.