How A Princess Was Wooed From Habitual Sadness

In days of old the King of Saxe     Had singular opinions,     For with a weighty battle-axe     He brutalized his minions,     And, when he'd nothing to employ     His mind, he chose a village,     And with an air of savage joy     Delivered it to pillage.     But what aroused within his breast     A rage well-nigh primeval     Was, most of all, his daughter, dressed     In fashion medival:     The gowns that pleased this maiden's eye     Were simple as Utopia,     And for a hat she had a high     Inverted cornucopia.     In all her life she'd never smiled,     Her sadness was abysmal:     The boisterous monarch found his child     Unutterably dismal.     He therefore said the prince who made     Her laughter from its shell come,     Besides in ducats being paid,     Might wed the girl, and welcome!     I ought to say, ere I forget,     She was uncommon comely--     (Who ever read a Grimm tale yet,     In which the girl was homely?)     And so the King's announcement drew     Nine princes in a column.     But all in vain. The princess grew,     If anything, more solemn.     One read her "Innocents Abroad,"     The next wore clothes eccentric,     The third one swallowed half his sword,     As in the circus-tent trick.     Thus eight of them into her cool     Reserve but deeper shoved her:     There was but one authentic fool--     The prince who really loved her!     He'd alternate between the height     Of hope and deep abasement,     He caught distressing colds at night,     By watching 'neath her casement:     He did what I have done, I know,     And you, I do not doubt it,--     Instead of bottling up his woe,     He bored his friends about it!     In brooding on the ways of Fate     Long hours he daily wasted,     His food remained upon his plate,     'Twas scarcely touched or tasted:     He said the bitter things of love,     All lovers, save a few, say,     And learned by heart the verses of     Swinburne, and A. de Musset!     This attitude his wished-for bride     To silent laughter goaded,     Until he talked of suicide,     And then the girl exploded!     "You make me laugh, and so," she said,     "I'll marry you next season."     (Not half the people who are wed     Have half so good a reason!)     The Moral: The deliberate clown     Can never beat love's barriers down:     'Tis better to be like the owl,     Comic because so grave a fowl.     From him we well may take our cue--     By him be taught, to wit, to woo!