Madam, or rather, mesdames, you must accept our apologies for not bein' able to perform,...

Professor G.H. Dorr:

Madam, or rather, mesdames, you must accept our apologies for not bein' able to perform, for, as you see, we are shorthanded. Gawain is still at work, and we could no more play with one part tacit than a horse could canter shy one leg. Perhaps I could offer, as a poor but ready substitute, a brief poetic recital. Though I do not pretend to any great oratorical skills, I would be happy to present, with your ladies' permission, verse from the unquiet mind of Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. Ladies, thy beauty is to me like those Nicean barks of yore, that gently, o'er a perfumed sea, the weary, wayworn wanderer bore, to his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, thy Naiad airs have brought me home to the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome