Explore "Humoresque" by T.S. Eliot on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
(After J. Laforgue)
One of my marionettes is dead / Though not yet tired of the game --
But weak in body as in head, / (A jumping-jack has such a frame).
But this deceasèd marionette / I rather liked: a common face, / (The kind of face that we forget)
Pinched in a comic, dull grimace; / Half bullying, half imploring air, / Mouth twisted to the latest tune; / His who-the-devil-are-you stare; / Translated, maybe, to the moon.
With Limbo's other useless things / Haranguing spectres, set him there; / "The snappiest fashion since last spring's, / "The newest style, on Earth, I swear.
"Why don't you people get some class?
(Feebly contemptuous of nose), / "Your damned thin moonlight, worse than gas --
"Now in New York" -- and so it goes.
Logic a marionette's, all wrong / Of premises; yet in some star / A hero! -- Where would he belong?
But, even at that, what mask bizarre!