The myth

February 11, 1982

If tales are true, in some deep, misty bog, A comely maid might kiss a frog And turn him straight into a prince. How nice for her, how nice for him With bliss so piquant in the dim Half-light of yellow rooms, where chintz Hangs crisply over neat white window panes, and twosome joy will scuff the lanes Which rise through birches in the dusk. Such alchemy! -- A thrill known well, For poets to so sagely tell How beauty sweetens every husk. But then they say, at some ill-timed embrace, Some frog-like look will cross the face And conjure back the teeming bog. And worse, for warted one in lilied bath, When beauty passing on the path, Can now see neither prince nor frog.