A Birthday Sonnet
to
Princess Ariel Baaldorf
by
Prince Geoffrey Blackpool*

Shall I compare thee to a dish of cheese?
Thou art more tasty than the finest plate;
Food poisoning disturbs the stomach's ease,
For ripened Swiss hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the kitchen pantry turns,
And then by mold its gold complexion's furr'd;
And every cheese, man to his sadness learns,
Is foul'd by time, whey sunder'd from the curd;
But thy eternal ripeness shall preserve,
Tho' thou art spoiled, naught shall despoil thy youth;
Nor shall Dirk brag he'll serve you as hors d'oeuvres,
Thou dost not need to fear his brutal tooth;
So long as I a living breath can wheeze,
So long no man shall ever cut thy cheese.

*With much assistance from
Billy "Hallmark" Shakespeare, Karteian Bard for Hire
(Second only to Dirk in the perpetration of lethal poetry)