Now Bare To The Beholder's Eye

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--Description: 19th C, Stevenson R.L., Adoration, Love, Passion--

Now bare to the beholder's eye
Your late denuded bindings lie,
Subsiding slowly where they fell,
A disinvested citadel;
The obdurate corset, Cupid's foe,
The Dutchman's breeches frilled below.
Those that the lover notes to note,
And white and crackling petticoat.

From these, that on the ground repose,
Their lady lately re-arose;
And laying by the lady's name,
A living woman re-became.
Of her, that from the public eye
They do enclose and fortify,
Now, lying scattered as they fell,
An indiscreeter tale they tell:
Of that more soft and secret her
Whose daylong fortresses they were,
By fading warmth, by lingering print,
These now discarded scabbards hint.

A twofold change the ladies know:
First, in the morn the bugles blow,
And they, with floral hues and scents,
Man their beribboned battlements.
But let the stars appear, and they
Shed inhumanities away;
And from the changeling fashion see,
Through comic and through sweet degree,
In nature's toilet unsurpassed,
Forth leaps the laughing girl at last


Robert Louis Stevenson

--Did You Know: (13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. Stevenson was greatly admired by many authors, including Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Marcel Schwob, Vladimir Nabokov, J. M. Barrie, and G. K. Chesterton, who said of him that he "seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins". An only child, strange-looking and eccentric, Stevenson found it hard to fit in when he was sent to a nearby school at six, a pattern repeated at eleven, when he went on to the Edinburgh Academy; but he mixed well in lively games with his cousins in summer holidays at the Colinton manse. In any case, his frequent illnesses often kept him away from his first school, and he was taught for long stretches by private tutors. He was a late reader, first learning at seven or eight; but even before this he dictated stories to his mother and nurse. Throughout his childhood he was compulsively writing stories. Read more at: R. L. Stevenson

--Word of the Day: torpor \TAWR-per\, noun:
1. Lacking in vitality or interest.
2. A state of mental or physical inactivity or insensibility.
3. Lethargy; apathy.
Example:
At 47, I'm starting to wonder which direction I'm headed. And with good reason because, according to my accountant, there is no way I'm going to be able to give in to torpor, fatigue or anything else that might take me out of the work force anytime soon.
-Michelle Slatalla, "A Play Date With My Imagination ", New York Times, June 2, 2009

--Quote of the Day: A sister is a gift to the heart, a friend to the spirit, a golden thread to the meaning of life.
-Isadora James

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