Classic Poem

The golden year is nearly sped—
This year of girlish wooing;
And lo, my hope of love is dead,
And fate is past undoing!
When suitors came in gentle spring
And proffered their caresses,
Like some coquettish, giddy thing,
I spurned their fond addresses.

So Minnie, Maggie, Maud, and Belle,
Miranda, Jane, and Jessie,
Maria, Nannie, Ruth, and Nell,
And charming blue-eyed Bessie
Went wooing other kindlier men
Too numerous to mention;
And I, by this hegira, then
Was left without attention.

But in the sere of autumn came
That sweetest maid of many,
With wit and beauty known to fame—
The blithe and winsome Jennie;
And having wooed as woman can,
Protesting she adored me,
She wed her father's hired man;
And that completely floored me!

O silly celibate, that spurned
The leap-year wooing vernal,
How hast thy haughty scorning turned
To self-reproach eternal!
I 'd give my wealth, my life, my fame,
If I could summon to me
In this bleak hour those nymphs that came
In early spring to woo me!