Yet a blossom I fain would pluck today from the garden above her dust,
Not the languorous lily of soulless sin, nor the blood red rose of lust,
But a sweet white blossom of holy love that grew in that one green spot,
In the arid desert of Phryne’s life where all else was parched and hot.
In the summer, when the meadows were aglow with blue and red,
Joe, the ’ostler of “The Magpie,” and fair Annie Smith were wed;
Plump was Annie, plump and pretty, with a face as fair as snow,
He was anything but handsome was the “Magpie’s” ’ostler Joe.
But he won the winsome lassie, they’d a cottage and a cow,
And her matronhood sat lightly on the village beauty’s brow;