Classic Poem

AS W. S. GILBERT MIGHT HAVE RENDERED IT

As a militant lover
I've taken to cover;
The lyrics of love—I have sung them all.
My lutes and my armor
Will rouse not a charmer;
In the temple of Venus I've hung them all.
Though aging and hoary,
Yet not without glory
I entered Love's lists when he 'sought me to;
Each maid I enraptured,
I came, saw and captured—
And lo, this is what it has brought me to.
Here, then, lay the crow-bars;
The door now needs no bars
That used to be fastened so tight to me.
Lay down Cupid's arrows—
The thought of them harrows
When girls are no sort of delight to me.
Yet, Goddess, whose feelings
Know not the congealings
Of Winter, the sting and the clutch of it,
Come down where it's snowy,
And give this cold Chloë
The lash—and a generous touch of it!