“You make me laugh, and so,” she said,

“I’ll marry you next season.”

(Not half the people who are wed

Have half so good a reason!)

The Moral: The deliberate clown

Can never beat love’s barriers down:

’Tis better to be like the owl,

Comic because so grave a fowl.

From him we well may take our cue—

By him be taught, to wit, to woo!