NOW bare to the beholder's eye <br />Your late denuded bindings lie, <br />Subsiding slowly where they fell, <br />A disinvested citadel; <br />The obdurate corset, Cupid's foe, <br />The Dutchman's breeches frilled below. <br />Those that the lover notes to note, <br />And white and crackling petticoat. <br /> <br />From these, that on the ground repose, <br />Their lady lately re-arose; <br />And laying by the lady's name, <br />A living woman re-became. <br />Of her, that from the public eye <br />They do enclose and fortify, <br />Now, lying scattered as they fell, <br />An indiscreeter tale they tell: <br />Of that more soft and secret her <br />Whose daylong fortresses they were, <br />By fading warmth, by lingering print, <br />These now discarded scabbards hint. <br /> <br />A twofold change the ladies know: <br />First, in the morn the bugles blow, <br />And they, with floral hues and scents, <br />Man their beribboned battlements. <br />But let the stars appear, and they <br />Shed inhumanities away; <br />And from the changeling fashion see, <br />Through comic and through sweet degree, <br />In nature's toilet unsurpassed, <br />Forth leaps the laughing girl at last.<br /><br />Robert Louis Stevenson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/now-bare-to-the-beholder-s-eye/
