Classic Poem

Of Propriety

Study first Propriety: for she is indeed the Polestar
Which shall guide the artless maiden through the mazes of Vanity Fair;
Nay, she is the golden chain which holdeth together Society;
The lamp by whose light young Psyche shall approach unblamed her Eros
Verily Truth is as Eve, which was ashamed being naked;
Wherefore doth Propriety dress her with the fair foliage of artifice:
And when she is drest, behold! she knoweth not herself again —
I walked in the Forest; and above me stood the Yew,
Stood like a slumbering giant, shrouded in impenetrable shade;
Then I pass'd into the citizen's garden, and marked a tree clipt into shape,
(The giant's locks had been shorn by the Dalilah-shears of Decorum;)
And I said, " Surely Nature is goodly; but how much goodlier is Art! "
I heard the wild notes of the lark floating far over the blue sky,
And my foolish heart went after him, and, lo! I blessed him as he rose;
Foolish! for far better is the trained boudoir bullfinch,
Which pipeth the semblance of a tune, and mechanically draweth up water:
And the reinless steed of the desert, though his neck be clothed with thunder,
Must yield to him that danceth and " moveth in the circles " at Astley's.
For verily, O my daughter, the world is a masquerade,
And God made thee one thing, that thou mightest make thyself another:
A maiden's heart is as champagne, ever aspiring and struggling upwards,
And it needed that its motions be checked by the silvered cork of Propriety:
He that can afford the price, his be the precious treasure,
Let him drink deeply of its sweetness, nor grumble if it tasteth of the cork.