Explore "The Modern Skeleton" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
As kings of old in riotous royal feasts, / Among the piled up roses and the wine, / Wild music and soft-footed dancing girls, / The pearls and gold and barbarous luxury, / Used to show also a white skeleton,- / To make life meeker in the sight of death, / To make joy sweeter by the thought thereof,-
So our new kings in their high banqueting, / With the electric lustre unforeseen, / And unimagined costliness of flowers; / Rich wines of price and food as rare as gems, / And all the wondrous waste of artifice; / Midst high-bred elegance and jewelled ease / And beauty of rich raiment; they should set, / High before all, a sickly pauper child, / To keep the rich in mind of poverty,- / The sure concomitant of their estate.