Blue Girls

Twirling your blue skirts, travelling the sward

Under the towers of your seminary,

Go listen to your teachers old and contrary

Without believing a word.

Tie the white fillets then about your hair

And think no more of what will come to pass

Than bluebirds that go walking on the grass

And chattering on the air.

Practice your beauty, blue girls, before it fail;

And I will cry with my loud lips and publish

Beauty which all our power shall never establish,

It is so frail.

For I could tell you a story which is true;

I know a woman with a terrible tongue,

Blear eyes fallen from blue,

All her perfections tarnished — yet it is not long

Since she was lovelier than any of you.