Dèr Mouw on 'la bête d'amour'

How tender a young girl! So sweetly shy,

so childlike! And twice graceful, since she’s fair.

Her mind’s kept healthy too – she reads with care,

her mother says, the good books I supply.

She blushes at a gentleman’s salute,

and fears his terrier’s antics aren’t quite sound

with her Alsatian, two legs off the ground,

oh dear me, no! what an unseemly brute!

Louys displeases her, she finds far finer

‘der herrlichste von Allen’, and H. Heine.

She hates twice over every pert cocotte,

adores Don Juan and laughs at Don Quijote:

apparent Artemis, there lurks for sure

yearning, demonic, la bête d’amour.