Edmund Blair Leighton, English
Failed Business Idea #374: Sweaters-While-U-Wait, 1900
Oil on panel
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THROWBACK THURSDAY: MASTERPIECE #310 (8/19/10)
Artist info is pointed to in my comment at a prior blog entry.
/// On the Threshold of pledging his troth,
he stops short, gripped by languor and sloth.
While he waits in a daze
she embroiders this phrase:
“Take my virtue or horse, but not both.”
/// He leaned back in the archway while musing,
“Shall I wed her or not? It’s confusing.”
Idly fingering his crop
‘til she told him to stop.
(It appeared too much like self-abusing.)
/// As he stood there, he pondered confiding
that he’d always been bad at deciding.
To be wed they’d agreed,
but he fancied her steed.
He must choose where and who he’d be riding.
/// He concluded that it would be fair
to get married and then they could share
her prized thoroughbred horse.
She refused him, of course.
It was her stallion. (She was the mare.)
/// He would ask her to give back his ring
when she’d finished her embroidering,
but her rude needlepoint
put his nose out of joint.
He regretted they’d had that brief fling.
/// He stood stock still while straining his ear,
in her cool, silent garden, to hear
sounds of needle and thread
pulled through cloth. Nothing’s said.
His scalp tingles, but why isn’t clear.
/// Through the cloth, that sharp needle she’d stick.
‘Til it slipped— gave her thumb a small nick.
Unexpected brief pain
made her look up again
to peer hard at this dumb little prick.