Classic Poem

" My son," the stranger thus began
And drew me to the window side,
" Now here are beauties better than
You ever have dreamed, or ever can
But yet beware! " he cried

A tidy citizen was he
Although a dismal daffy one.
" See this one pose and pout for me
And march around magnificently
But I'm immune my son

" Observe how ripe the lady's lips
How Titianesque the mop of hair,
And where the great white shoulder dips
Beneath its gauzy half-eclipse,
You well may stare and stare

When I was young I said as you
Are saying in your sapphic youth.
That ah! such lips were certain cue
And look! her bosom's rhythm too
It signified her truth;

" Her broad brow meant intelligence
And something better than a bone,
Her body's curves were spirit's tents.
Her fresh young skin was innocence
Instead of meat that shone

" I wish the moralists would thresh
(Indeed the thing is very droll)
God's oldest joke, forever fresh:
The fact that in the finest flesh
There isn't any soul