And may I—­Ah, thank you; the pleasure
Is mine; just one kiss by your ear!—­
May I introduce myself as your
Most dutiful godfather, dear?

I have fumed, like champagne that is fizzy,
To pay my respects at your door. 
But the publishers keep one so busy. 
Forgive my not calling before!

Karlene, you’re a very small lady
To venture so far all alone;
Especially into so shady
A place as this planet has grown.

When I now, my dear, was at your age,
When nobody tried to be rich,
But lived on high thinking and porridge
(And didn’t know t’ other from which!),

For a girl to go out unattended
Was considered “not only unwise
And improper—­” Our grandmothers ended
By lifting to heaven their eyes.

And yet even now, though it’s shocking
To slander these wonderful years,
I dare say an inch of black stocking
Could set all the world by the ears.

Black, mind you, not blue!  It’s a trifle;
But trifling in stockings won’t do;
For love has an eye like a rifle
(His bandage is slipping askew).

But there!  You are simply too charming. 
No doubt you’ll be modern enough
(Though the speed of the world is alarming)
To win with a delicate bluff,

As we say when we’re raking the chips in,
On a hand that was not over strong—­
But I see you are pursing your lips in;
Perhaps I am prating too long.

Anyhow you’ll be learned in isms,
And talk pterodactyls in French,
And know polyhedrons from prisms,—­
Though you may not know how to retrench.

You will fall out of love with digamma
To fall in again with Delsarte;
You will make a new Syriac grammar,
And know all the popes off by heart.

What Socrates said to Xantippe
When the lash of her tongue made him grieve;
What makes the banana peel slippy;
And what the snake whispered to Eve;

The music that Nero had played him,
When Rome was touched off with a match;
Why the king let the lady upbraid him
For burning her buns in a batch;

Why Hebrew is written left-handed;
And what Venus did with her arms;
What the Conqueror said when he landed;
The acres in Horace’s farms;

The use of hirundo and passer: 
All this you will probe to the pith
As a freshman at Wellesley or Vassar
Or Bryn Mawr—­though I prefer Smith.

You will solve every riddle in Browning;
And learn how to paddle and swim;
And save other people from drowning;
And play basket ball in the gym.

But you’ll scorn to know why there’s a tax on
All reading that isn’t a bore,
When Mallarme’s filtered through Saxon
And the Symbolists come to the fore.

All winter you’ll read mathematics
(Oh, you’ll be a terrible “prod"),
And in June, at the Senior Dramatics,
You will play like a star.  But it’s odd,