When I was a page in the Gothic age
Of William B. McKinley,
I had ideals about Public Weals
As high as John H. Finley
(Of Grand Ridge, Ill., where the hills are still),
Or Ruth or Solomon Finley.
And I little thought, as I delved and wrought,
I would fall for P. McGinley
(Phyllis Louise McGinley).

For Tennyson then was the meat for men
And Browning their olives and celery,
As often declaimed by exquisites named
Elmo and Elmer and Ellery.
While tepidly tippling we shouted Kipling
And all elocutionists
Would bellowing go to Fort Bucklow
On the track of the morning mists.

But now in the haze of mine elder days
I only read what I want to,
And Wodehouse and Rohmer have ousted Homer
And "The Aorist Use in Bantu."
Till ten I am wont (though that's late for Vermont)
To loll as I laugh at the queenly
And decorous leers, at the delicate jeers,
Of Phyllis Louise McGinley.

Sinclair Lewis