I'm looking for a poem called" Jenny Kissed Me" or perhaps just "Jenny".
It's about a man at the end of his life, looking back realizes, that most things that he thought important at the time are fading from his memory. The one thing that stays with him now, is that Jenny kissed him.
Does anyone know the poem or the author? Thank you.

I'ts by Leigh Hunt - you can find a collection of his poems in the Classic Poets list on this site.

rikki.
------------

Jenny kiss'd Me
by Leigh Hunt

Jenny kiss'd me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and welth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss'd me

I must have learned this poem from a cynic, because the version that stays in my head runs:

Say I'm weary, say I'm sad
Say that health and wealth have missed me
And if you seek a reason, add
Jenny kissed me.

Bruce Newling did a parody of this one. I will check around the house and see if I can find a copy. Ended with, 'Thank goodness Jenny merely kissed me", I believe. She had the flu or something.

I remember reading elsewhere someone arguing that Hunt's ditty is an eight-line rondeau, but I again forget where I saw it.

< rummages > Ah, here it is ... folded in half with some twenty other pages of his rhymes. Brown envelope, so of course it hides neatly at the bottom of the bookshelf.


Jenny kissed me when we met.
She, adorned in silk and satin,
Told me, "That is all you get;
And as you leave, don't let the cat in."
Retrospection makes me glad:
Dread disease perhaps thus missed me.
God knows what I might have had
Had Jenny more than merely kissed me.


I can see I didn't remember correctly about the flu.

Newling is also the one who invented the McWhirtle:


Dear Ann Landers
----------------

I'm really disgusted
With Myrtle McWhirtle,
The out-of-work bimbo
Residing next door.

She knows where to find
Herself honest employment
But chooses instead to be
Neighborhood whore.

According to our friends at the University of Toronto:

Notes

1] The Jenny of the poem is said to have been Jane Welsh Carlyle, wife of Thomas Carlyle.


pam

i'll never forget when she kissed me under the lilac tree