Classic Poem

Quis multa gracilis te puer in rosa?

What slender stripling in his primal year,
 His lip bedewed with “Tricholina,”
Amid your flower-pots with alluring leer
  Woos you, Georgina?

Across the counter leans his blazered arms,
 And, plying you with laboured sallies
Of amorous wit, around your waning charms
  Heavily dallies?

Who bids you bind your bun, I want to know,
 As once, my ever-verdant mignon,
For my sweet sake some thirty years ago
  You bound your chignon,

Simply mendacious in its artful dye,
 All golden as the daffodilly
To which you pinned my swelling chest, while I
  Looked really silly?

Alas! poor boy, he has a lot to learn
 Outside the Little-Go prospectus,
Things that will give him quite a nasty turn
  In Love's Delectus;

Who fancies, never having known a doubt,
 Your hair is naturally yellow;
Nor dreams you ever cared a bit about
  Another fellow.

For me, of course, I've had my little fling,
 And been lovesick on many an ocean,
And cease to feel about this kind of thing
  The least emotion.

And yet a touch of nature marks me kin
 To him, that budding young apprentice;
Besides, it's possibly my son that's in
   Loco parentis .