By Nirina Nancy Mignon
As if multiplied, scaled from th’ lesser;
Of its quantity and issue of provision.
Which magnified of its nariness
Doth in its peril seem as to compass grand
That of the dewlet singular seem a hail, storming.
Oft the maid braided of her stones,
Is harassed, in the cyclone of sorrow singular.
That she is to weep, and say to her lady-in-waiting
“Dost thou not see the moth has come to reap,
and have made chaff of mine attire?
And the signet of mine fairness,
Blared its choir no longer; sounded to null?
Withstanding mine zeal, that sets a’light
Ox to spring; I am but a crone, maddened and divorced of all youth.
Dampened of my innocence of cherubs, wrinkled and ruined alabaster.”
To reproof her dame will list,
“In thine folly, act’st as locusts had their feast,
And art in living testimony of what martyred Pharaohs,
Denuded of their fabric of life, rarer to come
Than the darling of your silk.
And the novelty of thy skin is
Intact, merely creased by a midnight’s
travail.
Dost thou not see, that what
Taketh for chronicles of annals
May be mended in a day’s work?
And yet the hole which like a termite slothful
Incised, is patched by finer stuff?
And by the setting of Sun,
The reason of thy sorrows
Damned from history;
As constant in thy mind as dream?”
And the lady spoke not,
For her sister in Madonna
Spoke verily.
Yet chastised felt she not,
As no fool is made in sorority.
Buck’d of every iron, foibled to divide,
Arrows sent by arbalests, in victorious fields reside.
Of the kindness you entreat, gladly am I foreborne
Of a fee augmenting that I am indebted, even indentured.