Classic Poem

Why then, sure it was made by a learned owl,
The “rule” by which I beg,
Forbidding to eat of the tender fowl.
That hangs on yonder peg.
But, rot it! no matter:
For here on a platter,
Sweet Margaret brings
A food fit for kings;
And a meat
Clean and neat—
That's an egg!
Sweet maid,
She brings me an egg newly laid!
And to fast I need ne'er be afraid,
For 'tis Peg
That can find me an egg.

Three different ways there are of eating them;
First boil'd, then fried with salt,—
But there's a particular way of treating them,
Where many a cook's at fault:
For with parsley and flour
'Tis in Margaret's power
To make up a dish,
Neither meat, fowl, nor fish;
But in Paris they call 't
A neat
Omelette.
Sweet girl!
In truth, as in Latin, her name is a pearl,
When she gets
Me a platter of nice omelettes.

Och! 'tis all in my eye, and a joke,
To call fasting a sorrowful yoke;
Sure, of Dublin-bay herrings a keg,
And an egg,
Is enough for all sensible folk!
Success to the fragrant turf-smoke,
That curls round the pan on the fire;
While the sweet yellow yolk
From the egg-shells is broke
In that pan,
Who can,
If he have but the heart of a man,
Not feel the soft flame of desire;
When it burns to a clinker the heart of a friar?