The Passionate Trotter to His Love

From The Seattle Star, August 18, 1913. By Berton Braley.

Dear lady of my heart’s desire,
    I love your lithe and slender grace,
Your rhythmic ease I much admire,
    I like the dancing steps you pace;
Your every move is my delight,
    So dainty and so brisk and free
You are a most entrancing sight—
    Oh, won’t you trot through life with me?

With love the fiddler for the dance
    And hearts as merry as a rhyme
We’ll turkey trot a glad romance
    In syncopated two-step time,
Though care should tread upon our toes
    And rough and bumpy be the floor,
We’d laugh at troubles such as those
    And gayly turkey trot some more!

Come then, my love, and be my wife
    And take the fate that fortune sends;
We’ll tango pleasantly through life
    And one-step till the music ends;
We’ll buy a rag-time gramophone
    With syncopated melody,
If you will only be my own
    And turkey-trot through life with me!