  The dragonfly blue’s all the fashion In beetle-land, in the present day; The butterflies their addresses pay To the beauty with amorous passion. Her hips are excessively slender, She wears a gauze dress of delicate hue, With very symmetrical movements too She flutters about in splendour. Her colour’d admirers hover In her train, and many a young gallant Thus swears: “I’ll Holland give, and Brabant “If thou wilt be my lover.” She answers (but how insincerely!): “Brabant and Holland are nothing to me, “I want but a spark of light, to see “In my little chamber clearly.” When she imposes this duty, Her lovers hasten to join in the race, And eagerly seek, from place to place, A spark of light for the beauty. As soon as one sees a taper, He blindly rushes on to his doom, And the cruel flames the victim consume, And his loving heart, like paper. * * * * It comes from Japan, this fable, Yet even in Germany, my dear child, Are plenty of dragonflies, devilish wild, Perfidious, and unstable. |
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