Wandering forth beyond the ladies’ ken,
She thought she spied a male face in the garden—
She hasten’d thither—she was not mistaken,
For sure enough, a man was there a-raking.
A man complete he was who own’d the visage,
A man of thirty-three, or may-be longer—
So young, she could not well distinguish his age—
So old, she knew he had one day been younger.
Now thirty-three, although a very nice age,
Is not so nice as twenty, twenty-one, or