XI.

“CONSERVATRIX of Milésien”

Habits of mind and feeling,

Possibly. But in Ealing

With the most bank-clerkly of Englishmen?

No, “Milésien” is an exaggeration.

No instinct has survived in her

Older than those her grandmother

Told her would fit her station.

“DAPHNE with her thighs in bark

Stretches toward me her leafy hands”,—

Subjectively. In the stuffed-satin drawing-room

I await The Lady Valentine's commands,

Knowing my coat has never been

Of precisely the fashion

To stimulate, in her,

A durable passion;

Doubtful, somewhat, of the value

Of well-gowned approbation

Of literary effort,

But never of The Lady Valentine's vocation:

Poetry, her border of ideas,

The edge, uncertain, but a means of blending

With other strata

Where the lower and higher have ending;

A hook to catch the Lady Jane's attention,

A modulation toward the theatre,

Also, in the case of revolution,

A possible friend and comforter.

Conduct, on the other hand, the soul

“Which the highest cultures have nourished”

To Fleet St. where

Dr. Johnson flourished;

Beside this thoroughfare

The sale of half-hose has

Long since superseded the cultivation

Of Pierian roses.