alexpgp | A High-Toned Old Christian Woman...

In listening to Tennessee Ernie Ford belt out Sixteen Tons, it occurred to me that I really had only an approximate understanding of "high-toned" (as in: "Can't no high-toned woman make me walk the line.")

Google provided the following momentary diversion, in the form of multiple links to the following poem:

A High-Toned Old Christian Woman
Poetry is the supreme fiction, Madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it,
And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in principle. That's clear. But take
The opposing law and make a peristyle,
And from the peristyle project a masque
Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness,
Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,
Is equally converted into palms.
Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm,
Madame, we are where we began. Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene,
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, Madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.
This will make widows wince. But fictive things
Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince.

by
Wallace Stevens, 1922