"Hear then this lesson from the Seller's bag— / You buy a woman when you buy a Jag."

My favorite West Wing moment is from "The Stackhouse Filibuster": CJ asks Sam his favorite writer, and Sam says it's his boss, Toby. It's always interesting when your favorite writer is someone you know. One of mine is my grandfather, who taught English to twelfth-graders for decades.

The backstory of this poem is that, when my grandfather was enrolled at Cambridge in the early 1970's, his professor assigned the class the task of writing a poem about some aspect of modern life in the style of a great poet. My grandfather saw a full-page ad for the Jaguar XJ6 in which Jag boasted of all the technicians—artisans!—responsible for the various stages of the XJ6's design and construction. The great poet, of course, is Pope:

'Tis said Adonis, when the heated Queen,
Riparian, turned her turtle-tears to teen,
Took inspiration from her mare and stallion,
Inventing for the world the motor-galleon.

For this, with subtle arts to merchandise,
He seeks the lights of engineers and eyes;
Sweeps all before him, parishes and burgs,
Electing weird affinities of ergs,
Miscegenating Love and Techne's forces
(By Dove Cytherean, Out of Puissant Horses).

Now Zephyrus alone can go before,
And so securer may his maids adore
With Elegantise and lesser odes
The Pentecostal Spirit of the Roads,
Speaking with tongues of flame, from pox and pyx,
The ultimate in Jag — the XJ6.

Adonis is enraptured as a dream;
Both maid and motor-car Belinda seem:
Not Holy Mother Mary, drawn by stars,
Outshines Belinda on her motor-cars.

Belinda's paintwork holy seven rul'd,
To Pythagorean perfection school'd;
Six times at first the leaden lacquer sprayed —
No Solomon, no ant so well arrayed.
"Un', Duo, Tres!" then "Quattor, Quinque, Sex!"
'Til scrutinizing Ted may scan for specks.

Roy Collins now, a connoisseur of hides,
Declares the leather soft as babes, or brides.
And Lizzie then, (the daughter of a Brown)
Examines all the stitching up and down
Concerned, as all must be, that be be seem,
And being seem, be seemly, to redeem
The seating that her minions nimblystitch
Lest Belle's diviner motions get to itch.

And now Old Williams, whom the font called Ray
(Anticipating, ere the dawn, the day)
Declares at last the complement of seven,
Inducing over all the hues of heaven.

But see! The son of woman, Mann, whose Mom
(So well she knew him) named him Tom,
Performs his Mannly act upon the bench,
And seizes first the spanner, then the wrench.
Fatigued and panting, dealt delight and dread,
Her cosmos was cosmetic, yea, her asphalt bed.
Grinding with passion, tittering with jest,
He roundly puts her engine to the test.

Say will she blench, this wench, if bench befall?
Say not. She'd nothing have you say at all:
Not that she fell, not then, not now, nor ever,
When she supports the brunt of Tom's endeavour.

Her Beauty? Lying arm in arm behold her,
For lie she must, and shall, until she's older.
The Queen of Love alone forgoes her arms,
Whose nakedness is dresser of her charms.
Belinda in her lesser spheres disposes
What Man, and Woman's God proposes,
Namely, that Love in women's hearts we fix
And best adorn, adore, with XJ6.

Hear then this lesson from the Seller's bag —
You buy a woman when you buy a Jag.