We’ve been drifting astern in these latter years;
We can’t tell what’s going to stand or to fall,
And there’s no sense in turning recruits away.
Besides the lad’s body has scarce a blemish,
And he’s strongly-built too, if I see aright.
It’s true, he has only a single head;
But my daughter, too, has no more than one.
Three-headed trolls are gone clean out of fashion;
One hardly sees even a two-header now,
And even those heads are but so-so ones.