TO A FINE WOMAN.

"Can my eyes reach thy size?"

Asked the Lilliputian poet,

As I've read. Can my head

Reach your shoulder? It's below it.

Women all are so tall

Nowadays, but you're gigantic;

One so vast, sweeping past,

Makes my five feet four feel frantic.

Each girl tries exercise,

Rows, rides, runs, golf, cricket, tennis,

Games for an Olympian—

Greek Olympia, not "Venice."

Stalks and shoots, climbs in boots

Like a navvy's not a dandy's,

Ice-axe takes, records breaks—

If not neck—on Alps or Andes.

Alps in height, girls affright

Men, like me, of puny figure;

They are too tall, but you

Are preposterously bigger.

At this dance, if I glance

Round the room, I see I'm smallest;

You instead are a head

Over girls and men, you're tallest.

As a pair, at a fair,

Any showman might produce us;

Dwarf I'd do, giant you——

What! They want to introduce us?

Can I whirl such a girl?

Calisthenics could not teach it.

I, effaced, clasp your waist?

I'll be hanged if I can reach it!