VENETIAN FLOWER SELLERS
Young, dark-eyed beauties, graceful, gay,
So I expected you to be,
Adorning in a charming way
This silent City of the Sea.
But you are very far from that;
You're forty—sometimes more—and fat.
Oh, girls of Venice! Woods, R.A.,
Has frequently depicted you,
Idealising, I should say—
A thing that painters often do;
Still, though your charms have left me cold,
At least you are not fat and old!
Why should you, flower-sellers, then,
Be so advanced in age and size?
You cannot charm the foreign men,
Who gaze at you in blank surprise.
You hover round me—like a gnat,
Each of you, but old and fat.
Extremely troublesome you are,
No gnats were ever half so bad,
You dart upon me from afar,
And do your best to drive me mad.
Oh bother you, so overbold,
Preposterously fat and old!
You buttonhole me as I drink
My caffe nero on the square,
Stick flowers in my coat, and think
I can't refuse them. I don't care.
I'd buy them, just to have a chat,
If you were not so old and fat.
Oh go away! I hate the sight
Of flowers since that afternoon
When first we met. I think of flight,
Or drowning in the still lagoon.
I am, unlike your flowers, sold,
You are so very fat and old.
SUGGESTED MOTTO FOR THE AËRATED BREAD COMPANY.
.... "His sleep
Was aëry light, from pure digestion bred."
Paradise Lost, B. V., line 4.