To describe the danseuse,
Is too much for my muse;
But if ever I fight a “duello,”
Or quarrel at mess,
It will be to possess
Such a jewel as Fanny Pellmello.
On her brow a tiara,
Like the lady’s in Lara,
Or a portrait of thine, Biandello;
With a twist and a twirl,
All diamond and pearl,
In bounded sweet Fanny Pellmello.
All the men in the cowls,
Were startled like owls,
When the sunbeam first darts in their dell, O;
As she flash’d on their eyes,
All were dumb with surprise—
All moon-struck with Fanny Pellmello.
As she waltzed through the hall,
None heard a foot fall,
All the chamberlains stood in a spell, O;
While, silent as snow,
She revolved on her toe,
A la Psyche—sweet Fanny Pellmello.
Whom she knelt to within
I can’t say, for my sin;
Those are matters on which I don’t dwell, O;
But I know that a Queen
Was nigh bursting with spleen
At the diamonds of Fanny Pellmello.
Were I King, were I Kaiser,
I’d have perish’d to please her,
Or dared against all to rebel, O;
I’d have barter’d a throne
To be bone of thy bone,
Too exquisite Fanny Pellmello.
If Paris had seen
Her pas seul on the green,
When the goddesses came to his cell, O,
Forgetting the skies,
He’d have handed the prize
To all-conquering Fanny Pellmello.
Achilles of Greece
Though famed for caprice,
Would have left Greek and Trojan in bello,
Cut country and king,
And gone off on the wing
To his island with Fanny Pellmello.
Alexander the Great,
Though not over sedate,
And a lover of more than I’ll tell, O,
Would have learn’d to despise
All his Persians’ black eyes,
And been faithful to Fanny Pellmello.
Marc Antony’s self
Would have laid on the shelf
His Egyptian so merry and mellow;
Left his five hundred doxies,
And found all their proxies
In one, charming Fanny Pellmello.