The Hattiesburg News

THE MATINEE HAT.

'Twas at the play its glories struck my eye;
In fact the matinee itself fell flat,
When all my wondering wits were dazzled by
The lady's hat.

Its base was equipoised isosceles,
With segments counter cockspatched from the rise,
All gayly twinkling like the Pleiades
In Arctic skies.

The scheme was Gothic, but would tax the muse
To sing the architectural meaning of the rim
That ended with a weird hypothenuse
Above the brim.

And there were arcs and rhomboids, circles, lines
And polygons with diaphragms and joints,
And high corpse candles peeping out of shrines
At awkward points.

The color scheme is somewhat hard to tell,
For some weird tints were half defined and vague,
As if upon a raisin pudding fell
An addled egg.

And 'neath a sheen of white, transparent silk
A scarlet bow stood out in bold relief,
As though a careless hand had split the milk
Upon the beef.

And at the corner all the knots and bows
From browns and reds descended into gloom,
And one bold slap of whiteness upright rose
Just like a tomb.

I'd gone to see a play by Bernard Shaw,
To view its staging was my plan,
Beyond their super-hat I never saw
Poor super-man.

-Albert E. Bull.