Classic Poem

Maecenas, you wonder what spell I am under
And why I continue to stall;
You cannot help thinking that I have been drinking—
I haven't at all.

My verses are thinnish? I simply can't finish
The creaking iambics I start …
The god's interference has caused my arrearance—
(The god of the heart.)

Bathyllus of Samos excited the famous
Anacreon, maker of rhymes;
Why, you took a trip in your car with a pippin
A couple of times.

And so my cessation from versification,
For Phyrne's the girl I adore.
(In which I have plenty of company—twenty
Or twenty-one more).