Classic Poem

Oh yes, I've seen your Boston girls,
And anchored close to Cambridge curls;
But from Ches'peake 'way down to Maine
There is no girl like Sarah Jane.

What love-lit eyes! Twin beacons rare!
What landscape cheeks! what wavy hair!
Her mouth — a sort of inland sea,
Her smile — a whole Geography.

She is the bonniest, best-rigged lass
From Sandy Hook to Hatteras;
And when she laughs her open face
Looks like a sea-side watering-place.

What joy to launch a gallant kiss
Upon that tideless sea of bliss!
To start it off, and let it float
To realms of sweetness far remote;

To navigate a whaling smack,
Without a thought of getting back;
To drift unheeding day or night,
Or drop, like Jonah, out of sight.

And yet one seems to need a chart
To find a port from which to start;
Her mouth is like Long Island Sound,
It takes a week to go 'way round.

And very few survive the trip,
Especially round the upper lip;
A treacherous coast, where, all forlorn,
Her nose protrudes — just like Cape Horn.

Columbus thought, by sailing west,
To find the Islands of the Blest,
But had he ploughed this pathless sea
He might have sailed eternally.

The voyage may be safe and plain,
But please excuse me, Sarah Jane;
On second thought I'm in no haste
To launch upon that boundless waste.

So tempt me not; the sweetest kiss
No sounding finds in that abyss.
I'd rather float in Baffin's Bay,
While others make your coast survey.


My Annie dear, you lift your eyes
To ask me where the moral lies?
Ah, rose-bud mouth, well — if you please,
There have been wrecks on smaller seas.