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Portrait de Mademoiselle Yseult Fayet, 1908

                Her head is heavy yet, for she is a child :
She stoops in the consciousness of her place.
        All sensitivity has moved from her brow into
Her small mouth ; her blonde hair has fallen dully
        About the white shoulders of her blouse ;
        Her grey eyes move before her like water.
        A bow of smudged satin sits at her crown,
Where some vague matriarch will have fastened it,
        As if she were waiting to be photographed.

                She looks upon a bank of rioting flowers
With the consternation of all young girls
                Presented with unfamiliar forms.
        She glances from pendulums of fuchsia
To where dark leaves, seeming spattered in yellow,
Flicker in the evening light :           
                                            Aureoles of seablue
And sky and midnight throb from their stalks,
        Fragile, rich, musked with honey.
The air moves upon her, as a skein of smoke unfolds,
        Versant ses sinuosités dorées.

Pauvre petite! Her love has not yet aged,
    It cowers in its bedclothes at the top of the stairs,
Listening to soft music from the parlour.
Her father's voice. Yseult est réveillée.       She turns.
The plates-bandes resonate with foreign colour.