Conversation Galante by T.S. Eliot — Read

I OBSERVE: ‘Our sentimental friend the moon! / Or possibly (fantastic, I confess) / It may be Prester John's balloon / Or an old battered lantern hung aloft / To light poor travellers to their distress. ' / She then: ‘How you digress!'

And I then: ‘Someone frames upon the keys / That exquisite nocturne, with which we explain / The night and moonshine; music which we seize / To body forth our own vacuity.'

She then: "Does this refer to me?"

"Oh no, it is I who am inane.'

"You, madam, are the eternal humorist,

The eternal enemy of the absolute,

Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist!

With your aid indifferent and imperious

At a stroke our mad poetics to confute- / And-‘Are we then so serious? '