Black Kate

Kate, they say, is seventeen     Do not count her sweet, you know.     Arms of her are rather lean     Ditto, calves and feet, you know.     Features of Hellenic type     Are not patent here, you see.     Katie loves a black clay pipe     Doesnt hate her beer, you see.     Spartan Helen used to wear     Tresses in a plait, perhaps:     Kate has ochre in her hair     Nose is rather flat, perhaps.     Rose Lorraines surpassing dress     Glitters at the ball, you see:     Daughter of the wilderness     Has no dress at all, you see.     Lauras lovers every day     In sweet verse embody her:     Katies have a different way,     Being frank, they waddy her.     Amy by her suitor kissed,     Every nightfall looks for him:     Kittys sweetheart isnt missed     Kitty humps and cooks for him.     Smith, and Brown, and Jenkins, bring     Roses to the fair, you know.     Darkies at their Katie fling     Hunks of native bear, you know.     English girls examine well     All the food they take, you twig:     Kate is hardly keen of smell     Kate will eat a snake, you twig.     Yonder ladys sitting room     Clean and cool and dark it is:     Kittys chamber needs no broom     Just a sheet of bark it is.     You may find a pipe or two     If you poke and grope about:     Not a bit of starch or blue     Not a sign of soap about.     Girl I know reads Lalla Rookh     Poem of the heady sort:     Kate is better as a cook     Of the rough and ready sort.     Byrons verse on Waterloo,     Makes my darling glad, you see:     Kate prefers a kangaroo     Which is very sad, you see.     Other ladies wear a hat     Fit to write a sonnet on:     Kitty has the naughty cat     Neither hat nor bonnet on!     Fifty silks has Madame Tate     She who loves to spank it on:     All her clothes are worn by Kate     When she has her blanket on.     Let her rip! the Phrygian boy     Bolted with a brighter one;     And the girl who ruined Troy     Was a rather whiter one.     Katies mouth is hardly Greek     Hardly like a rose it is:     Katies nose is not antique     Not the classic nose it is.     Dryad in the grand old day,     Though she walked the woods about,     Didnt smoke a penny clay     Didnt hump her goods about.     Daphne by the fairy lake,     Far away from din and all,     Never ate a yard of snake,     Head and tail and skin and all.