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Home  »  Poetica Erotica  »  A Love Song

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.