Template:Illustrated Lady

From ElvisCostello

I dip my pen into the well and draw up

An indolent Princess, insolent soldiers and invisible garments thrown over old tyrants

A heart that beats within a spinning top

Scratched upon blank paper

Stain it with Indian ink

Now let me think

How does a glass containing ruby wine fill up once it is drunk?

Why does that song come from branches of a lightening blasted trunk?

Friends said I would recognise her by her silhouette

And that I’d be sorry for that merry day before we met

But where on earth is my ideal?

Is this she the latest one who makes me feel my heart, my heart

My heart is set upon?

But if my past I should reveal then I may well be undone

My mother was laundress

Wading in the icy river

The blue veins raised upon her skin like carnival tattoos

Washing out of secrets found in other people’s dirt

Gin to cheer her when the waters were turbulent

And laughing at the scandal of a noble mistress beaten by her servant

Her sister ran a wanton house of dubious repute

Her daughter fell into the arms of every brute

Who offered her a tiny fist of coins and drunken punches

Blows and blessings raining down in bunches

And I gathered up these splinters put them in my tales and misadventures

Where is the one that I hold sacred

Everything that I hold dear

Anyone that I wanted but can’t hold near for fear

For fear, for fear, for fear

Anyone one that I wanted

Anyone that I hold dear

For fear

For fear

They said that Jenny, too was once an ugly wretch

And how her dress was torn and ragged

Back when her life was bleak and rugged

She had no sense for fine perfume

And still her eyes cast down as she walks through each gilded room

You’ll note her gowns are never hung with a strings of pearls

No one who sees her, plain and modest, senses the illegitimate girl

Hidden within…

So, hark and hail “The Swedish Nightingale”