TO A FINE WOMAN.
Reading edition
(By a Little Man.)
"Can my eyes reach thy size?" Asked the Lilliputian poet, As I've read. Can my head Reach your shoulder? It's below it. Women all are so tall Nowadays, but you're gigantic; One so vast, sweeping past, Makes my five feet four feel frantic. Each girl tries exercise, Rows, rides, runs, golf, cricket, tennis, Games for an Olympian— Greek Olympia, not "Venice." Stalks and shoots, climbs in boots Like a navvy's not a dandy's, Ice-axe takes, records breaks— If not neck—on Alps or Andes. Alps in height, girls affright Men, like me, of puny figure; They are too tall, but you Are preposterously bigger. At this dance, if I glance Round the room, I see I'm smallest; You instead are a head Over girls and men, you're tallest. As a pair, at a fair, Any showman might produce us; Dwarf I'd do, giant you—— What! They want to introduce us? Can I whirl such a girl? Calisthenics could not teach it. I, effaced, clasp your waist? I'll be hanged if I can reach it!
