Jonathan slavishly worships his belle,

Whom everyone else thinks a shrew.

According to him, if you had such a wife,

You’d be uxorious, too.

I say she’s voluble, testy, and brash,

A classic virago, a nag.

If you were her husband you’d need all the tricks

That Petruchio had in his bag.

But Jonathan sees her through thick, turbid lens

As succulent, sensuous, sweet,

Her salient trait, metaphorically,

A beckoning, fresh marguerite.

Give me a woman with spurious past,

Saturnine, torpid, half dead.

Instead of Xanthippe, relentlessly shrill,

Give me Socrates’ hemlock instead.