Joaquin Miller's Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

“What's Paris but a painted screen,
A gaudy gauze that scant conceals
The sensuous nakedness between
The folds it but the more reveals?
What's Paris but a circus, fair,
To tempt this west world's open purse
With tawdry trinkets, toys bizarre?
Ah, would that she were nothing worse!
What's Paris but a piteous mart
For west-world mothers crazed to trade
Some silly, simpering, weak maid
For thread-bare, out-at-elbows rank—

To outworn, weak degenerate
Whose bank is but the faro bank,
Whose grave bounds all his real estate;
Whose boast, whose only stock in trade,
A duel and a ruined maid!