Classic Poem

Alas, this Rembrandtesque design
Of you can show but shadowy traces
My portraiture I must confine
Exclusively to Ugly Faces.

My ill-trained pencil never treats
Faces I like or friends I know:
I narrow the fierce light that beats
Upon the harmless Eskimo.

Where for six months the white world sleeps,
Your engine never would grow cold;
Your most Internal Engine keeps
All the Combustion it can hold.

And you whose hooter sang its song
From Tarragona to Brabant,
Who crossed the Alps, taking along,
Like Hannibal, an Elephant.

So would your social tact have told,
At first if Nordics were not nice,
Were Arctic social circles cold,
You would contrive to break the ice.