Ballade of His Lady
My lady’s heart ’twere hard to touch,
And sighs and vows she’d soon repel;
But if she liked one twice as much,
One would not like her half as well;
She careth not for sage or swell,
For guardsman stout or poet lean,
Who haunt Parnassus or Pall Mall;
My lady-love is just thirteen.
She loves a rabbit in a hutch
(A fat Aquinas in his cell),
She loves an aged cat, whose clutch
At breakfast-time exerts a spell,
A most ungracious Florizel.
In fact it’s easy to be seen,
Were she at all averse to tell,
My lady-love is just thirteen.
Although she reads the Higher Dutch,
On culture’s peaks apart to dwell,
She feigns not; nor of things ‘as such’
Does she discourse, nor parallel
Dante and Dante Gabriel;
Yet she has ‘views’ advanced and keen,
On chocolate and caramel,—
My lady-love is just thirteen.
Envoy.
Madam, just homage you compel,
Mature, self-conscious, and serene,
One heart alone you cannot quell;
My lady-love is just thirteen.
J. B. B. Nichols.