Now Bare to the Beholder's Eye by Robert Louis Stevenson

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.