Is it true?
Are Ariel's whims
Embodied in your artful limbs?
And Puck, they say, betrayed you all his lore:
Did he? Are you--
As now to me at any rate you seem,
Twisting a Longhi into fun and air,--
Are you, perhaps, that unpropounded theme
Of playfulness Mozart forgot to score,
As lyrical and debonair and new
And fair?
The rhythm snaps. Surely I caught you there?
You are, at least I'm almost sure you were,
Some truant from the lesser Piero's store,
A living Procne by a livelier shore,
Where lustier satyrs ply remorselessly
More pagan antics by a bluer sea,
A sea as frankly unmysterious
As Theocritus.
1918.