The first couplet has the ring of a proverb: “Stars reflected in the water / Are jewels enough for Pharaoh's daughter.” Hoffenstein sets two images side by side—the night sky above and its trembling copy on the water—and turns the reflection into treasure. The stars are not said to be like jewels; they are “jewels enough,” sufficient wealth for a princess out of ancient story. That little word “enough” matters. It does not promise excess; it promises that the natural world, in its shimmer, can satisfy even the most legendary appetite for splendor. Yet the princess named is not a living person. She is “Pharaoh's daughter,” a figure from remote antiquity, more title than woman.
The third line snaps the spell: “But Pharaoh's daughter's dead and gone.” The repetition of the royal phrase turns it into something almost dismissive, and then “dead and gone” lands with the flatness of plain speech. A princess who can command rivers of wealth and be offered stars as jewelry is simply no longer here. The couplet does not mourn her. It states a fact, and the poem then turns to the real present tense: “While living girls are getting on.” The word “while” is important. It makes the living girls simultaneous with the dead princess’s absence, filling the space she left behind.
Much of the poem’s force comes from its deliberate plainness. After the exotic “jewels” and “Pharaoh's daughter,” Hoffenstein gives us “girls” and “getting on.” The phrase is ordinary, social, even conversational. “Getting on” can mean continuing, managing, growing older, or simply getting on with life. It is an open-ended verb phrase, and it is placed at the very end of the poem so that the last word, “on,” feels like forward motion. That is the opposite of “gone.” The alliteration in “girls are getting” gives the ending a quick, pulsating energy, as though the poem itself picks up speed once the dead princess is left behind.
The construction supports this shift. The four lines break into two rhyming couplets. The first rhyme, water/daughter, is soft and two-syllabled, almost liquid, matching the reflected image. The second rhyme, gone/on, is hard and monosyllabic. The sounds move from something lingering to something quick and final. The first couplet is longer and more decorated, like the treasure it describes; the second is compressed, like a shrug. The rhythm never grows heavy with grief because the poem is too witty to stop and sigh. It presents a pretty image, admits that its central figure is dead, and then turns to life without apology.
What makes the poem significant is how much it refuses to romanticize. It might have lingered over the beautiful dead princess; instead, it treats her as an example of what no longer matters. The stars in the water remain, but she cannot wear them. The living girls, who are not royal and are not offered any jewels, are “getting on.” In a quiet way, the poem argues that life is not best understood through static treasures or legendary names. It is best understood through movement, continuity, and the unglamorous fact of being alive. That is why a four-line song can feel both sharp and generous: it gives its final energy not to the gleam of history, but to the girls who are still moving through it.