Explore "At Madame Manicure's" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Daintiest of Manicures! / What a cunning hand is yours; / And how awkward, rude and great / Mine, as you manipulate! / Wonderfully cool and calm / Are the touches of your palm / To my fingers, as they rest / In their rosy, cosey nest, / While your own, with deftest skill, / Dance and caper as they will, -- / Armed with instruments that seem / Gathered from some fairy dream -- / Tiny spears, and simitars / Such as pixy armorers / Might have made for jocund fays / To parade on holidays.
And flash round in dewy dells, / Lopping down the lily-bells; / Or in tilting, o'er the leas, / At the clumsy bumblebees, / Splintering their stings, perchance, / As the knights in old romance / Snapped the spears of foes that fought / In the jousts at Camelot! / Smiling? Dainty Manicure? -- / 'Twould delight me, but that you're / Simply smiling, as I see, / At my nails and not at me! / Haply this is why they glow / And light up and twinkle so!