A MATCH
IF I were Anglo-Saxon,
And you were Japanese,
We’d study storks together,
Pluck out the peacock’s feather,
And lean our languid backs on
The stiffest of settees—
If I were Anglo-Saxon,
And you were Japanese.
If you were Della-Cruscan,
And I were A.-Mooresque,
We’d make our limbs look less in
Artistic folds, and dress in
What once were tunics Tuscan
In Dante’s days grotesque—
If you were Della-Cruscan,
And I were A.-Mooresque.
If I were mock Pompeian,
And you Belgravian Greek,
We’d glide ’mid gaping Vandals
In shapeless sheets and sandals,
Like shades in Tartarean
Dim ways remote and bleak—
If I were mock Pompeian,
And you Belgravian Greek.
If you were Culture’s scarecrow,
And I the guy of Art,
I’d learn in latest phrases
Of either’s quaintest crazes
To lisp, and let my hair grow,
While yours you’d cease to part—
If you were Culture’s scarecrow,
And I the guy of Art.
If I’d a Botticelli,
And you’d a new Burne-Jones,
We’d dote for days and days on
Their mystic hues, and gaze on
With lowering looks that felly
We’d fix upon their tones—
If I’d a Botticelli,
And you’d a new Burne-Jones.
If you were skilled at crewels,
And I a dab at rhymes,
I’d write delirious “ballads,”
While you your bilious salads
Were stitching upon two ells
Of coarsest crash, at times—
If you were skilled at crewels,
And I a dab at rhymes.
If I were what’s “consummate,”
And you were quite “too, too,”
’Twould be our Eldorado
To have a yellow dado,
Our happiness to hum at
A teapot tinted blue—
If I were what’s “consummate,”
And you were quite “too, too.”
If you were what “intense” is,
And I were like “decay,”
We’d mutely muse, or mutter
In terms distinctly utter,
And find out what the sense is
Of this æsthetic lay—
If you were what “intense” is,
If you were wan, my lady,
And I your lover weird,
We’d sit and wink for hours
At languid lily-flowers,
Till, fain of all things fady,
We faintly—disappeared—
If you were wan, my lady,
And I your lover weird.
Punch.