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Here, on the contrary, too tight and scraggy,
It waved its tiny cane or opera glasses,
And preened a comic coiffeur’s frizzled masses,
You, sure, forgetting there of apes the land is,
Had cried: “Lo! Pricop, one of thy prime dandies!”
As to ape lady lionesses say,
Who’d paint the lily or their charms pourtray?
Those gorgeous silks, those “parures” so transcendent,
The subtle movement of those fine, dusk hands,
When, like a love-net, many a fan resplendent
Its wavering curves and chequered ribs expands,
And listening to the soft and bird-like cluttering
You think of other fair ones’ half-lisped kisses
By moonlit Moldau, or the foreign spluttering
Of malapropos by raw school-girl misses.
A heavy dream behind the apes it lay—
That time of barbarous customs, clamberings, dances;
To keep in all the pure Caucasian way
Each watched his neighbour with Draconian glances;
A crushing smile would stab the social sinner
Who, absent-minded, trod the thronged saloons
Without his tie or minus pantaloons,
Or handed with his foot some dame to dinner.
And “chronique scandaleuse” cut like a sabre
With blighting taunt, and quickly gossip warmed up
How this or that uncultivated neighbour,
By day, quite unabashed the banyan swarmed up;
And if of lotus bloom or parrot ever
Some lady ape a mild remark should venture,
Bent shell-like ear to ear each female censor,
“How naive! nu! she was never very clever!”
For well-bred apedom’s small talk to two themes is
