Just imagine yourself seated on a shadowy terrace,
And beside you is a girl who stirs you more strangely than an heiress.
It is a summer evening at its most superb,
And the moonlight reminds you that To Love is an active verb,
And the stars are twinkling like anything,
And a distant orchestra is playing some sentimental old Vienna thing,
And your hand clasps hers, which rests there without shrinking,
And after a silence fraught with romance you ask her what she is thinking,
And she starts and returns from the moon-washed distances to the shadowy veranda,
And says, "Oh, I was wondering how many bamboo shoots a day it takes to feed a baby Giant Panda."
Or you stand with her on a hilltop and gaze on a winter sunset,
And everything is as starkly beautiful as a page from Sigrid Undset,
And your arm goes around her waist and you make an avowal which for masterfully marshaled emotional
content might have been a page of Ouida's or Thackeray's,
And after a silence fraught with romance she says, "I forgot to order the limes for the Daiquiris."
Or in a twilight drawing room you have just asked the most momentous of questions,
And after a silence fraught with romance she says, "I think this
little table would look better where that little table is, but then where would that little table
go, have you any suggestions?"
And that's the way they go around hitting below our belts;
It isn't that nothing is sacred to them, it's just that at the Sacred Moment they are
always thinking of something else.
Claude Monet, The Waterlily Pond