The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #147770   Message #3426729
Posted By: Joe Offer
27-Oct-12 - 02:17 AM
Thread Name: Origins: The Streets Of Cairo
Subject: ADD: The Ballet-Girl (poem)
A related poem, which doesn't scan to the same melody:

From Puck, Volume 12, Issue 355

THE BALLET-GIRL.

With complexion like the rose
    'Mid the snows.
Due to powder on her nose,
    I suppose,
She twirls upon her toes
In abbreviated clothes
And exhibits spangled hose
    To her beaux.

When cruel Time bestows
    Adipose,
Fairy parts and all those
    She outgrows,
And murmuringly goes
To the very hindmost rows,
To pirouette and pose
    With the "crows."

When life frayed and faded grows,
    Like her bows,
She in garrets sits and sews
    Furbelows,
Till her weary eyelids close
In the peace of death's repose.
Is she reaping what she sows?
    Heaven knows!

—Lippincott's Magazine.

...also in Helen Potter's Impersonations