alarming)
To win with a delicate bluff,

As we say when we're raking the chips in,
On a hand that was not over strong--
But I see you are pursing your lips in;
Perhaps I am prating too long.

Anyhow you'll be learned in isms,
And talk pterodactyls in French,
And know polyhedrons from prisms,--
Though you may not know how to retrench.

You will fall out of love with digamma
To fall in again with Delsarte;
You will make a new Syriac grammar,
And know all the popes off by heart.

What Socrates said to Xantippe
When the lash of her tongue made him grieve;
What makes the banana peel slippy;
And what the snake whispered to Eve;

The music that Nero had played him,
When Rome was touched off with a match;
Why the king let the lady upbraid him
For burning her buns in a batch;

Why Hebrew is written left-handed;
And what Venus did with her arms;
What the Conqueror said when he landed;
The acres in Horace's farms;

The use of _hirundo_ and _passer_:
All this you will probe to the pith
As a freshman at Wellesley or Vassar
Or Bryn Mawr--though _I_ prefer Smith.

You will solve every riddle in Browning;
And learn how to paddle and swim;
And save other people from drowning;
And play basket ball in the gym.

But you'll scorn to know why there's a tax on
All reading that isn't a bore,
When Mallarme's filtered through Saxon
And the Symbolists come to the fore.

All winter you'll read mathematics
(Oh, you'll be a terrible "prod"),
And in June, at the Senior Dramatics,
You will play like a star. But it's odd,

Since you'll quote every cadence in Kipling
And Arnold (of course I mean Matt),
If you don't make a bard of some stripling
Before he knows where he is at.

I am sure you'll be lovely as Trilby,
The loveliest bud of the year;
But remember, Karlene, I shall still be
Your doting old godfather, dear.

When you hear Archimedes' conundrum,
Like enough you'll be wanting to try
Whether one little girl _contra mundum_
Can't lift the old thing with a pry!

You will turn up your nose at poor "Thy will,"
With a haughty agnostical sniff,
Till you find the imperative "I will"
Has a future conditional "if."

And then you will come to your senses,
And find out why women were made;
And men too; and why there are fences
All round the whole lot where you strayed,

While you wore yourself down to a shadow
Yet failed to discover your sphere;
For you'll see Adam down in the meadow
And think what a goosey you wer