'
No knight could really romantic be
Who wore a beard! So, father, to please me,
No beard; they are, I think, such scrubby things--
MYSELF: Yet they are worn, sometimes, by poets and kings.
GILL: But your knight--
MYSELF: Oh, all right,
My Gill, from your disparagement to save him,
I, like a barber, will proceed to shave him.
Sir Pertinax, then, stroked his smooth-shaved chin,
And thus to curse he softly did begin,
"Par Dex, my lord--"
My daughter GILLIAN interposeth:
GILL: Your knight, dear father, seems to love to curse.
MYSELF: He does. A difficult matter, child, in verse--
GILL: Of verse I feel a little tired--
MYSELF: Why, if you think a change desired,
A change we'll have, for, truth to tell,
This rhyming bothers me as well.
So here awhile we'll sink to prose.
Now, are you ready? Then here goes!
"Par Dex, my lord!" growled Sir Pertinax. "A malison on't, says I, saving
thy lordly grace, yet a rogue is a rogue and, being rogue, should die right
roguishly as is the custom and the law.
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