I sometimes think it would be sweet
If we were like the olden lovers—
The simple-hearted ones we meet
In musty books with vellum covers.

For lovers in those times were blest,
Or else our poets all are lying,
And if fate crossed them in their quest
They had most charming ways of dying.

But you are not a shepherdess
With woolen frock and linen wimple,
And if you were I'd love you less,
I couldn't kiss a swarthy dimple.

And I am not a woodsman wight,
Nor yet a leather-jerkined yeoman,
And I am glad I'm not a knight
With many a boiler-plated foeman.

Yet though for lovers of those days
I have poetic predilections,
To wooing in their artless ways
I own there are a few objections.

A crown of flowers your head might grace,
But it would spoil your frizzled tresses,
And burrs would hardly look in place
Upon your tailor-fashioned dresses.

And I'd not care to gather haws
And sit in thorny shades to chew them,
And who would pipe on oaten straws
When he might suck mint-juleps through them!

In sooth, we're better as we are:
Your gravest task to baffle freckles,
And mine to keep all care afar
And work for the elusive shekels.