Poetry Archives

She has just “put her gown on” at Girton,
She is learned in Latin and Greek,
But lawn tennis she plays with a skirt on
That the prudish remark with a shriek.
In her accents, perhaps, she is weak
(Ladies ARE, one observes with a sigh),
But in Algebra—THERE she’s unique,
But her forte’s to evaluate pi.

She can talk about putting a “spirt on”
(I admit, an unmaidenly freak),
And she dearly delighteth to flirt on
A punt in some shadowy creek;
Should her bark, by mischance, spring a leak,
She can swim as a swallow can fly;
She can fence, she can put with a cleek,
But her forte’s to evaluate pi.

She has lectured on Scopas and Myrton,
Coins, vases, mosaics, the antique,
Old tiles with the secular dirt on,
Old marbles with noses to seek.
And her Cobet she quotes by the week,
And she’s written on [Greek text:  kev] and on [Greek text:  kai],
And her service is swift and oblique,
But her forte’s to evaluate pi.

ENVOY.

Princess, like a rose is her cheek,
And her eyes are as blue as the sky,
And I’d speak, had I courage to speak,
But—her forte’s to evaluate pi.