Classic Poem

Down from my father's forest farm,
A little boy, I'm bringing,
Peach baskets full on either arm
And bugs my neck a'stinging.
It is so hot I cannot swear,
In the mosquitoes' gripe sick,
But I expect to see her there—
The ham-armed girl at Leipsic.

Her arm is large as country hams,
Skinned white, with reddish fleshing,
Her gentle bleat is like a lamb's,
Her bosom, how refreshing!
She never thinks of timid me,
Tho' darting like a snipe sick,
That casts sheep's eyes whene'er I see
The ham-armed girl at Leipsic.

The creek winds through a marsh as high
As the low-gabled houses,
The vessels pierce the drooping sky,
The stunted heifer browses.
Penn's Germans planned a wheat port nigh
And smoked the gnats till pipe-sick,
And there descended like a thigh
The ham-armed maid of Leipsic.

I never knew of love's alarm
Till she that shoulder flashed me,
And her effulgent Phryne's arm
Dropped on my heart and mashed me.
Through sixty years it folds me still,
With years I'm growing ripe-sick,
I see her, young, beside the kill,
The ham-armed girl of Leipsic.