Soft, versifying youths that prate,
And think themselves immensely clever,
Their elders often irritate,
By writing love-sick rhymes for ever—
A practice we abominate:
Shall we succumb to gammon? Never!
Not that I hate the fellows’ rhymes:
Once I was young too and enamoured:
Ah, me! those were transcendent times!
How often I my passion clamoured,
And loves and woes in jingling chimes,
Like smith on anvil, stoutly hammered!
Looked love to eyes that looked again—
Reciprocation rather pleasant,
And apt to stir both heart and brain
Of every grade, from peer to peasant!
Hold hard! this is a silly strain:
I’m quite oblivious of the present!
For I’ve a wife—a tender spouse,
Once the ideal of my fancies;
But, since we took to keeping house,
It happened—as it always chances—
We bade adieu to raptured vows,
For real life is not Romance’s!
That’s why the novels mostly end
At entrance into matrimony!
The writers may, perhaps, pretend,
’Tis one long round of bliss and honey—
A theory so odd, my friend,
That makes a victim rather funny!
Too soon one feels, when fairly hooked,
The iron doom, depend upon it!
One’s way of life for ever crooked,
A zigzag orbit round a bonnet!
Connubial bliss, though fair it looked,
Proves no fit theme for mirthful sonnet!
Hard, say the martyrs, is their fate:
Ask them from Petersburg to Cadiz:
And yet you youngsters idly prate
Of love, and bliss, and witching ladies!
Be warned in time, or know too late,
You never can retreat from Hades!