'Tis a dark-purple sort of a moonlighted kind of a midnight, I know;
You remember those verses I wrote on Irene, from Edgar A. Poe?
It was Lady Aholibah Levison, daughter of old Lord St. Giles,
Who inspired those delectable strains, and rewarded her bard with her
smiles.
There are tasters who've sipped of Castalia, who don't look on _my_
brew as _the_ brew:
There are fools who can't think why the names of my heroines of title
should always be Hebrew.
'Twas my comrade, Sir Alister Knox, said, "Noo, dinna ye fash wi'
Apollo, mon;
Gang to Jewry for wives and for concubines, lad--look at David and
Solomon.
And it gives an erotico-scriptural twang," said that high-born young
man, "--tickles
The lug" (he meant ear) "of the reader--to throw in a touch of the
Canticles."
So I versified half of The Preacher--it took me a week, working slowly.
Bah!
You don't half know the sex, Bill--they like it. And what if her name
was Aholibah?
I recited her charms, in conjunction with those of a girl at the _café_,
In a poem I published in collaboration with Templeton (Taffy).
There are prudes in a world full of envy--and some of them thought it
too strong
To compare an earl's daughter by name with a girl at a French _restaurant_.
I regarded her, though, with the chivalrous eyes of a knight-errant on
quest;
I may say I don't know that I ever felt prouder, old friend, of a conquest.