And her great merchant husband with blue eyes, And strong beaked English nose, Walks straighter for a pride that she is his. Gives her a country place spaced out in walks, And flower beds, where now such flimsy flats Confront Grand Boulevard! And for a city house he builds a house Three stories high at Twentieth street, Where then the manifest was sand and oaks, And what is now the Loop, was just as far As Hyde Park from the Loop is now. In this bay-window then she sits a bride, And sees the scrub oak cut and mansions fill Gradually year by year the waste of sand. For fashion follows her and builds beside her, Till Prairie Avenue becomes the street Of millionaires, who hear from traveled wives What London is, what Paris is, And open purses to unfolding tastes For canvases and sculpture. For every one grows rich now in Chicago. And in the seventies women go to Paris, Herself among the first, at least the chief, See Egypt and see Rome. And when returned drive down where wondering eyes Along the marble terrace promenading, Where Michigan Avenue was bounded by The Lake across the street, Behold the striped silk of their parasols Fluttering over plumes and dancing eyes, And purple velvet of Victorias. For now it is the classic age! There is the driving park, There is the Palmer House, There are cathedrals too. There are the lofty ceilings walnut trimmed, And foliate chandeliers of polished brass, And marble-slabbed buffets with heavy cupids, And clustered fruits carved in their sombre wood, And square pianos with their rosewood legs Swelled out with oval figures like great plums. And paintings deeply daubed in brown asphaltum Where chiaroscuro ends were lost in shadows, Not lost in light, depressionistic things, From which her lambent intuition led her. She was among the first to catch the psychic Waves that sweep around this little world And change all things. She traveled much and lived in Europe much, Returning to her window where she watched The city pass and bow its admiration, The half of whom she knew as time went on, Though all knew her and said “there is the queen,” Or “there she is who thinks she is the queen.”