Carl Sandburg addresses someone who has been completely remade by the beauty and fashion industry—modistes, manicures, mannikins—until strangers on the street call her proud and beautiful. The phrase returns again and again like a tag. The image of the “great enigmatic bird of paradise” makes her sound like an object on display, not a person. After all the money, skill, and effort are spent, after she becomes the “last word in good looks,” nothing actually opens up. She is left only hearing voices and seeing eyes repeat that she is proud and beautiful. The speaker sounds weary, even sarcastic, about this transaction. The mood is hollow and ironic: a person has been turned into a staged, exotic display, and the only reward is a compliment that begins to feel empty. It suggests that being fixed and formulated into beauty may cost something more than money.
Proud and Beautiful — Summary
After you have spent all the money modistes and manicures and mannikins will take for fixing you over into a thing the people on the streets call proud and beautiful, After the shops and fingers have worn out all they have and know and can hope to have and know for the sake of making you what the people on the streets call proud and beautiful, After there is absolutely nothing more to be done for the sake of staging you as a great enigmatic bird of paradise and they must all declare you to be proud and beautiful, After you have become the last word in good looks, insofar as good looks may be fixed and formulated, then, why then, there is nothing more to it then, it is then you listen and see how voices and eyes declare you to be proud and beautiful.