Black, mind you, not blue! It's a trifle;
But trifling in stockings won't do;
For love has an eye like a rifle
(His bandage is slipping askew).
But there! You are simply _too_ charming.
No doubt you'll be modern enough
(Though the speed of the world is alarming)
To win with a delicate bluff,
As we say when we're raking the chips in,
On a hand that was not over strong--
But I see you are pursing your lips in;
Perhaps I am prating too long.
Anyhow you'll be learned in isms,
And talk pterodactyls in French,
And know polyhedrons from prisms,--
Though you may not know how to retrench.
You will fall out of love with digamma
To fall in again with Delsarte;
You will make a new Syriac grammar,
And know all the popes off by heart.
What Socrates said to Xantippe
When the lash of her tongue made him grieve;
What makes the banana peel slippy;
And what the snake whispered to Eve;
The music that Nero had played him,
When Rome was touched off with a match;
Why the king let the lady upbraid him
For burning her buns in a batch;
Why Hebrew is written left-handed;
And what Venus did with her arms;
What the Conqueror said when he landed;
The acres in Horace's farms;
The use of _hirundo_ and _passer_:
All this you will probe to the pith
As a freshman at Wellesley or Vassar
Or Bryn Mawr--though _I_ prefer Smith.
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