T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
A Love Song
Anonymous(From Songs, Comic, and Satyrical, by George Alexander Stevens, 1782) |
LET him fond of fibbing invoke which he’ll choose, | |
| Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, or Madam the Muse; | |
| Great names in the classical kingdom of letters, | |
| But poets are apt to make free with their betters. | |
| I scorn to say aught, save the thing which is true, | 5 |
| No Beauties I’ll plunder, yet give mine her due; | |
| She has charms upon charms, such charms as can’t plague you, | |
| She has charms for the tooth-ache, and eke for the ague. | |
| Her lips;—she has two, and her teeth they are white, | |
| And what she puts into her mouth they can bite; | 10 |
| Black and all black her eyes, but what’s worthy remark, | |
| They are shut when she sleeps, and she’s blind in the dark. | |
| Her ears from her cheeks equal distance are bearing, | |
| ’Cause each side her head should go partners in hearing; | |
| The fall of her neck’s the downfall of beholders, | 15 |
| Love tumbles them in by the head and the shoulders. | |
| Her waist is—so—so, so waste no words about it, | |
| Her heart is within it, her stays are without it; | |
| Her breasts are so pair’d—two such breasts when you see, | |
| You’ll swear that no woman yet born e’er had three. | 20 |
| Her voice neither nightingales, no! nor canaries, | |
| Nor all the wing’d warblers wild whistling vagaries; | |
| Nor shall I to instrument music compare it, | |
| ’Tis likely, if you were not deaf you might hear it. | |
| Her legs are proportion’d to bear what they’ve carry’d, | 25 |
| And equally pair’d, as if happily marry’d; | |
| But wedlock will sometimes the best friends divide, | |
| By her spouse so she’s serv’d when he throws them aside. | |
| Not too tall, nor too short, but I’ll venture to say, | |
| She’s a very good size—in the middling way. | 30 |
| She’s—aye, that she is,—she is all,—but I’m wrong, | |
| Her All I can’t say, for I’ve sung All my song. | |