Matilda Scheurer painted and preened
pretty poisoned wreaths in shades of green.
Wealthy fashionable women’s attire
were drop dead gorgeous and subtly dire.
Hats and gloves and even the seams
of emerald ball gowns were all dyed green
by Matilda Scheurer’s deeply stained tint
in hues of apple moss, forest fern, mint.
When suddenly her fingernails turned lime shade;
the whites of her eyes the colour of glade.
Everything she saw had a patina of green.
She foamed at the mouth and even her spleen
was coated in a shade of Paris green.
Matilda Scheurer was only nineteen
when she fluffed those leaves in shades of green.
And inhaling her last green breath she died –
of that Victorian devil: arsenic trioxide.
For Matilda Scheurer, 1842–1861