The tale of a noble lady in a sad state of decline. |
A Victorian Dowager There is an elderly lady who has lived by the ocean For over a century. Once the epitome of elegance, she won the admiration of all with her noble mien. Time has been cruel; her fine laces are tattered. She has been stripped of her jewels and Great Danes have gnawed on her newels. History whispers through her halls, while raccoons bumble down the steep service stairs to raid the refrigerator. Black dogs howl with sirens, and bay at the strangers who have the temerity to approach her peeling front doors. Locals fear those doors; they point, and shudder, recounting tales of scarlet-gowned apparitions who attempt to push unwanted visitors to their doom at the foot of the gracious grand staircase. Wide eyed witnesses relate how a shadow sits by the window of the master suite waiting, watching for a captain who will never return, though the scent of his pipe yet lingers. Two policemen were driven off the third floor by a disembodied voice shouting "Get Out!" from the thick dark. One resident tells of a young girl in a calico dress who wanders across the front lawn with a white kitten, and disappears. Hearsay and rumour are poison-mawed. I see different visions, Days when the mansion Was bright with life, and every window glowed with the warmth of the fireplace beyond, before she was shorn of the tiara of her widow's walk that views the ocean. I love her cracked walls, the shabby opulence of her scrolled trim, the romances and tragedies that she has witnessed through fifteen decades. I grudge time, and its helpmate, decay Every chunk of plaster that rainwater bears crashing to the broad pine planks of the floor. But we are poor and can only sit in her high ceilinged rooms dreaming of the untold wealth That would restore this Victorian dowager to her former glories. |