Today’s tease comes from My Ántonia, by Willa Cather.

On the edge of the prairie, where the sun had gone down, the sky was turquoise blue, like a lake, with gold light throbbing in it. Higher up, in the utter clarity of the western slope, the evening star hung like a lamp suspended by silver chains — like the title page of old Latin texts, which is always appearing in new heavens, and waking new desires in men.

When I closed my eyes, I could hear them all laughing — the Danish laundry girls and the three Bohemian Marys. Lena had brought them all back to me. It came over me, as it had never done before ,the relation between girls like those and the poetry of Virgil. If there were no girls like them in the world, there would be no poetry.

“This old chap will be proposing to you some day, Lena.”
“Oh, he has — often!”
“What?! After you’ve refused him?”
“He doesn’t mind that. It seems to cheer them to mention the subject. Old men are like that, you know. It makes them feel important to think they’re in love with somebody.”