The Parrot

The parrot's voice snaps out--

No good to contradict--

What he says he'll say again:

Dry facts, like biscuits,--

His voice and vivid colours

Of his breast and wings

Are immemoriably old;

Old dowagers dressed in crimpèd satin

Boxed in their rooms

Like specimens beneath a glass

Inviolate--and never changing,

Their memory of emotions dead;

The ardour of their summers

Sprayed like camphor

On their silken parasols

Entissued in a cupboard.

Reflective, but with never a new thought

The parrot sways upon his ivory perch--

Then gravely turns a somersault

Through rings nailed in the roof--

Much as the sun performs his antics

As he climbs the aerial bridge

We only see

Through crystal prisms in a falling rain.

Sacheverell Sitwell [ref 124]