WHY ELINOR IS EVER YOUNG.
(By a Fiancé à la Mode.)
["... The women they might have married—the girls whom they danced with when they were youths—have grown too old for our middle-aged suitors."—Standard.]
I'm just engaged: I'm forty-five—
Our modern prime for wedded blisses.
The age par excellence to wive
With blooming fin-de-siècle Misses;
I'm very happy; so's my Love;
I don't regret that long I've tarried;—
And yet I can't help thinking of
The damozels I might have married.
Yes; there was Janet, slim and pert;
I took her in last night to dinner,
And cannot honestly assert
That years conspire to make her thinner;
Yet once we cooed o'er tea and buns;
She quite forgets how on we carried,
Nor owns, with undergraduate sons,
That she was one I might have married.
And Lilian, emanation soft,
Fair widow of the latter Sixties,
Ideal of the faith that oft
With earliest homage intermixt is;
I used to dream her, oh! so young;
She's wrinkled now and bent and arid;
It almost desecrates my tongue,
But she was one I might have married.
A truce to recollection sore;
I'm still considered smart and youthful;
And trusting, darling Elinor
Assures me so with passion truthful;
In my fond eyes she'll wither ne'er,
Because—the fact can scarce be parried—
I shan't survive to see her share
The fate of those I might have married!