16th Bike-Pool-Spa of the season, 161st day of summer (high down a degree from yesterday, at now 88... 108th of 80-or-more), the first unscheduled long-day weekend in some time: general catch-up, composition of page 10 re Pictures at Rodie's Exhibition,
over even a third Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet,
which somehow triggers the acquisition of A.A. Milne / Disney films, and the tracking down of
Pocohontas [1595? - 1617] by Rosemary and Stephen Vincent Benet
from A Book of Americans (1933)
Princess Pocahontas,
Powhatan's daughter,
Stared at the white men
Come across the water.
She was like a wild deer
Or a bright, plumed bird,
Ready then to flash away
At one harsh word.
When the faces answered hers,
Paler yet, but smiling,
Pocahontas looked and looked,
Found them quite beguiling.
Likes the whites and trusted them,
Spite of kin and kith,
Fed and protected
Captain John Smith.
Pocahontas was revered
By each and every one.
She married John Rolfe
She had a Rolfe son.
She crossed the sea to London Town
And must have found it queer,
To be Lady Rebecca
And the toast of the year.
"La Belle Sauvage! La Belle Sauvage!
Our nonpareil is she!"
But Princess Pochahontas
Gazed sadly toward the sea.
They gave her silk and furbelows.
She pined, as wild things do
And, when she died at Gravesend
She was only twenty-two.
Poor wild bird - -
No one can be blamed.
But gentle Pocahontas
Was a wild thing tamed.
And everywhere the lesson runs,
All through the ages:
Wild things die
In the very finest cages.
***
... the above wonderfully set by Edwin London, of course, as the first movement of his Portraits of Three Ladies.
