To Myrtilla

written by


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Twelve fleeting years ago my Myrt,
  (Ehu fugaces! maybe more)
I wrote of the directoire skirt
  You wore.

Ten years ago, Myrtilla mine,
  The hobble skirt engaged my pen.
That was, I calculate, in Nine-
  Teen Ten.

The polo coat, the feathered lid,
  The phony furs of yesterfall,
The current shoe-I tried to kid
  Them all.

Vain every vitriolic bit,
  Silly all my sulphuric song.
Rube Goldberg said a bookful; it
  'S all wrong.

Bitter the words I used to fling
  But you, despite my angriest Note,
Were never swayed by anything
  I wrote.

So I surrender. I am beat.
  And, though the admission rather girds,
In any garb you're just to sweet
  For words.

© Franklin Pierce Adams