The Pompadour in Art: II

Because thou knowest well that Grecian dream
Of white Fauns in a wood, and slender girls,
Frail, laughing lilies shaking their bright curls
Among the trees, is an unnatural dream;
The soft, white skin which has so bright a gleam,
Those slender limbs and delicate, manicured hands
Have they not been desired in ancient lands—
A part of that strange lure, that mystical beam
Of beauty, which on many a drab old tower
At sunset casts a fairy artifice,
Lending rough bricks a sudden magic power
So that dead clay becomes beauty's device
For coquetry in clothes and hair and hands
Is the quick spirit loosening matter's bands!