IL PENSEROSO
Love's song is sung in ragtime now
And kisses sweet are syncopated joys,
The tender sign, the melancholy moan,
The soft reproach and yearning up-turned gaze
Have passed into the caves without the gates
And in their place, to serve love's purposes,
Bold profanations from the music halls
Are working overtime.
In days of old the amorous swain would sigh
And say unto his lady love the while
He pressed her to his heaving low-cut vest,
“Dost love me, sweet?” And she, with many a blush,
Would softly answer, “Yes, my cavalier!”
Now to his girl the ragtime lover says,
The while he strums his marked-down mandolin
“Is you ma lady love?” and she, his girl,
Makes answer thus: “Ah is!”
Gadzooks! it makes me sad! I see the doom
Of Cupid, and upon the battered air
I hear a rumor floating. It is this:
That when the boy god shuffles to the grave
'Tis Syncopated Sambo that will get
His job!
* * * * *
Ah, me! What sadness resteth on my soul!