Fortunatus the Pessimist

ing All the garden path, as if Frolic Summer took to snowing. [There is a knock at the outer door.] URANIA. Enter and welcome. I am too intent To greet you at the threshold. Enter, I say. Nor loaf nor oven will wait; so pass within. [abaddon enters.] Urania (going on with her worK). The very visitor I wanted. Abaddon (aside). So! The spell has worked prodigiously. (To Urania) Fair lady, I in my pack to-day have gauds so deft, They would make plainness comely, slattern limbs Natty and trim as Venus when she rose Up from her rippling pillow on the sea, Flushed with the rosy daintiness of dawn, With her own mould for corset, and the fringe Of wind-blown lace for flounce and furbelow. [He puts his pack on the table, and opens it.] Now, look on this cuirass ! URANIA. Please mind my loaves, [She puts them, one after the other, in the oven.] I'll heed you presently. Abaddon (holding up the cuirass). See ! they who clasp This firm but frolic jerkin to their waist, Need be no more beholden unto Nature, Who is an artist accidentally, As sooth she was when she imagined You, But far too often works with niggard hand, Or else the plastic matter of the flesh Disposes disproportionately. Now this, This animated breast, compelling buckler? Look on them well!?appear as if repoussed Upon the very lines of Juno's mould, Its dimpled crevices and swelling curves, A paragon of rounded sensuousness. Urania (turning round... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.