Edmund Blair Leighton, English
Woman Reading the Operating Instructions for Her New Rake, 1883
Oil on panel
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THROWBACK THURSDAY: MASTERPIECE #1127 (1/15/15)
Artist info is pointed to in my comment at a prior blog entry.
/// Prudence strolled down her garden’s north edge,
on the path by a tall border hedge,
too engrossed in her reading
to observe what needs weeding,
for the author had made her a pledge.
/// Love notes come with a single red rose,
but The Letter was not one of those.
The pledge wasn’t to woo her;
this lout promised to sue her.
He blamed Pru for his new broken nose.
/// He’d brought roses last week. They were fake.
Tried to sell them to Pru. First mistake!
She’d refused his “great deal.”
(Pru liked her flowers real.)
And that’s when the fool stepped on her rake.
/// The instructions she thoroughly sifted,
well before the new rake she first lifted.
“Pull, not push,” may seem silly,
but it would have helped Billy
at the famed Midvale School for the Gifted.
(Apologies to mystified readers who aren’t fans of
Gary Larson’s Far Side.)