An Elective Course

Lines Found Among The Papers Of A Harvard Undergraduate     The bloom that lies on Fanny's cheek     Is all my Latin, all my Greek;     The only sciences I know     Are frowns that gloom and smiles that glow;     Siberia and Italy     Lie in her sweet geography;     No scholarship have I but such     As teaches me to love her much.     Why should I strive to read the skies,     Who know the midnight of her eyes?     Why should I go so very far     To learn what heavenly bodies are!     Not Berenice's starry hair     With Fanny's tresses can compare;     Not Venus on a cloudless night,     Enslaving Science with her light,     Ever reveals so much as when     SHE stares and droops her lids again.     If Nature's secrets are forbidden     To mortals, she may keep them hidden.     AEons and aeons we progressed     And did not let that break our rest;     Little we cared if Mars o'erhead     Were or were not inhabited;     Without the aid of Saturn's rings     Fair girls were wived in those far springs;     Warm lips met ours and conquered us     Or ere thou wert, Copernicus!     Graybeards, who seek to bridge the chasm     'Twixt man to-day and protoplasm,     Who theorize and probe and gape,     And finally evolve an ape--     Yours is a harmless sort of cult,     If you are pleased with the result.     Some folks admit, with cynic grace,     That you have rather proved your case.     These dogmatists are so severe!     Enough for me that Fanny's here,     Enough that, having long survived     Pre-Eveic forms, she HAS arrived--     An illustration the completest     Of the survival of the sweetest.     Linnaeus, avaunt! I only care     To know what flower she wants to wear.     I leave it to the addle-pated     To guess how pinks originated,     As if it mattered! The chief thing     Is that we have them in the Spring,     And Fanny likes them. When they come,     I straightway send and purchase some.     The Origin of Plants--go to!     Their proper end _I_ have in view.     O loveliest book that ever man     Looked into since the world began     Is Woman! As I turn those pages,     As fresh as in the primal ages,     As day by day I scan, perplext,     The ever subtly changing text,     I feel that I am slowly growing     To think no other work worth knowing.     And in my copy--there is none     So perfect as the one I own--     I find no thing set down but such     As teaches me to love it much.