Poor Lucy's father died one night
From a stroke at forty-three;
WIth complications caused by drink
And perhaps an S.T.D.
Her mother, she could not recall.
She went to Heaven, see,
When Daddy worked at a banking job,
And Lucy was but three.

And Daddy could not handle it.
The loss destroyed his heart.
The life he'd built had suddenly lost
Its one most precious part.
And so he drank, and drank again
And lost a job or three.
And Lucy wondered at his grave,
"What will become of me?"

A lovely lass of seventeen
And full of love and hope,
She quickly spent her savings bank
And found she could not cope.
She'd used a small inheritance
To pay her Daddy's bills.
And now she starved, no roof or food,
Beset with woes and ills.

She would not turn to the dirty streets,
She had her pride, at least,
And many's the offer she turned down
From a monied, hungry beast.
She held her morels dear and close,
While in this living hell.
And finally found her pathway out:
She became a chanterelle.

And now she tours in a velvet car,
And sings before the Crown,
And many a suitor, rich and kind,
She regretfully turns down.
Oh, there's many a song-bird on the wing,
From the Liffey to the Don,
But of them all, no man denies,
Our Lucy's champignon.

Aloyisius Allcott Winslow Lodge
Morels in Modern Thyme
Cordon Bleu Press, Le Vesinet, 1892