English Poetry. Ella Wheeler Wilcox. The South. Элла Уилкокс.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (Элла Уилкокс)

The South

A queen of indolence and idle grace,
    Robed in the vestments of a costly gown,
She turns the languor of her lovely face
    Upon progression with a lazy frown.
    Her throne is built upon a marshy down;
Malarial mosses wreathe her like old lace;
    With slim crossed feet, unshod and bare and brown,
She sits indifferent to the world's swift race.
Across the seas there stalks an ogre grim:
    Too languid she for even fear's alarms,
    While frightened nations rally in defence,
She lifts her smiling Creole eyes to him,
    And reaching out her shapely unwashed arms,
    She clasps her rightful lover---Pestilence.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s other poems:

1. The Phantom Ball
2. The Giddy Girl
3. The Awakening (I love the tropics, where sun and rain)
4. The Bed
5. Bleak Weather

Poems of other poets with the same name (Стихотворения других поэтов с таким же названием):

Emma Lazarus (Эмма Лазарус) The South (“Night, and beneath star-blazoned summer skies”)

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