"Good heavens, man, what a freak of taste!Henrik Ibsen, trans. Fydell Edmund Garrett, 1912.
What blindness to form and feature!
The girl's no beauty, and might be placed
As a hoydenish kind of creature."
No doubt it were more in the current tone
And the tide today we move in,
If I could but choose me to make my own
A type of our average woman.
Like winter blossoms they all unfold
Their primly maturing glory;
Like pot-grown plants in the tepid mould
Of a window conservatory.
They sleep by rule and by rule they wake,
Each tendril is taught its duties;
Were I worldly-wise, yes, my choice I'd make
From our stock of average beauties.
For worldly wisdom what do I care?
I am sick of its prating mummers;
She breathes of the field and the open air,
And the fragrance of sixteen summers.
Photo of Molly Ringwald, via banquet.
