Poetry Archives

Full many a sinful notion
  Conceived of foreign powers
Has come across the ocean
  To harm this land of ours;
And heresies called fashions
  Have modesty effaced,
And baleful, morbid passions
  Corrupt our native taste.
O tempora! O mores!
  What profanations these
That seek to dim the glories
  Of apple-pie and cheese!

I’m glad my education
  Enables me to stand
Against the vile temptation
  Held out on every hand;
Eschewing all the tittles
  With vanity replete,
I’m loyal to the victuals
  Our grandsires used to eat!
I’m glad I’ve got three willing boys
  To hang around and tease
Their mother for the filling joys
  Of apple-pie and cheese!

Your flavored creams and ices
  And your dainty angel-food
Are mighty fine devices
  To regale the dainty dude;
Your terrapin and oysters,
  With wine to wash ’em down,
Are just the thing for roisters
  When painting of the town;
No flippant, sugared notion
  Shall my appetite appease,
Or bate my soul’s devotion
  To apple-pie and cheese!

The pie my Julia makes me
  (God bless her Yankee ways!)
On memory’s pinions takes me
  To dear Green Mountain days;
And seems like I see Mother
  Lean on the window-sill,
A-handin’ me and brother
  What she knows ‘ll keep us still;
And these feelings are so grateful,
  Says I, “Julia, if you please,
I’ll take another plateful
  Of that apple-pie and cheese!”

And cheese! No alien it, sir,
  That’s brought across the sea,—
No Dutch antique, nor Switzer,
  Nor glutinous de Brie;
There’s nothing I abhor so
  As mawmets of this ilk—
Give me the harmless morceau
  That’s made of true-blue milk!
No matter what conditions
   Dyspeptic come to feaze,
The best of all physicians
  Is apple-pie and cheese!

Though ribalds may decry ’em,
  For these twin boons we stand,
Partaking thrice per diem
  Of their fulness out of hand;
No enervating fashion
  Shall cheat us of our right
To gratify our passion
  With a mouthful at a bite!
We’ll cut it square or bias,
  Or any way we please,
And faith shall justify us
  When we carve our pie and cheese!

De gustibus, ‘t is stated,
  Non disputandum est.
Which meaneth, when translated,
  That all is for the best.
So let the foolish choose ’em
  The vapid sweets of sin,
I will not disabuse ’em
  Of the heresy they’re in;
But I, when I undress me
  Each night, upon my knees
Will ask the Lord to bless me
  With apple-pie and cheese!