There a smooth throat, an arched, attractive ankle, Soft cheek, curved back in bloom to close-set ear, Red mouth full-lipped, a voice whose love-tones rankle Still in this heart of mine,--a voice so dear That ... But no more! In fear this rhyming prank’ll Offend some damozel whom I revere, I state: Jill’s just an ordinary blonde, Fair, frail, flirtatious, rather fast than fond. You know the type--aristo-plutocratic, Out of blue blood by hard North Country cash; A self-assertive sire; a dam, lymphatic (Since rarely strawberry leaves and sovereigns clash); Their sole son, daring in the diplomatic (Thumping his Underwood while kingdoms crash); Their daughter ... Is there a man alive can swear Exactly what she did or did not dare? For Jill was one of those astounding females, Born in a chaster, pre-Edwardian day; When lone Lucindas dared not dine nor tea males For dread lest scandal dub them “_coryphée_”; When none drank deep of D’Abernonian dream-ales, But quietly our Empire went its way, Nor realised that subalterns on horses Monopolized the brain-power of its Forces: One who was yet a span from flapperhood, Still puzzling o’er the simplest of equations; What time in robe of saffron Phoebus stood, And all our Lanes were gay with green carnations, And private hansoms sought the Johnian Wood, And the shrill cycle-bell’s first tintillations Resounded from the dawning to the dark In a Rolls-Royceless, Peter Panless Park: One who attained the pig-tail’s ribboned dowry, And helped to pass a Kipling tambourine, When first from lands of wattle, maple, Maori, Men came at summons of a dying Queen: One who, at Auteuil, Dresden, and Rathgowrie, Acquired that polish reft of which, I ween, It is not possible for our Dianas To emulate a modern _grande dame’s_ manners: One on whose head the ostrich-feathers nodded In Alexandrine courts--and _chez_ Bassano; In whose young ears, song’s angels disembodied. Rang the last notes of Melbourne’s own soprano; Whose lithe feet, Moykoff-shod, the grouse-moors plodded, Or danced the new Machiché Brasiliano, In times before, unchaperoned of skinny ma, Suburbia’s daughters sought the darkling kinema: To put the matter briefly--One of Them. Bear witness, Muses Nine, how most unworthy Is my gold nib to touch their garment’s hem. Say, Byron (for as bard I still prefer thee To all whose pallid minor stars be-gem These Gotha nights) would not such task deter thee From the rhymed octave--sometime known as Whistlecraft-- In which, poor ass, I ply this weekly thistlecraft?