A Dutchman’s Guide to Tulip Investing

You exchange coin for bulb and bubble grow?

Of tuber that talks the language Low,

of port not poor where guilders gone,

O gilded damsel do I forewarn.

 

Darling,

put down your brew and listen here:

you with pearled ear shall see you naked kept.

You, and tulip, with love so queer,

floral fortune shall not near.

 

But you cannot leave �" not with the other love in blossom.

Mosaic florets,

abnormal and awesome,

tend towards plain when mother matches �"

and even plainer with mother’s mother,

to the point all equals the other.

 

If unseen are her quirks,

then this quite beloved bloom of springtime shall eye

her wet stock dry.

Yet it is I who you decry?

I do believe that this fits best

our treasured trader’s temptress.  

 

The investment you’ve made I shall respect,

and likewise the one we’ve made together

in stamen-pistil pollination weather.

 

Yet perhaps we ask too much of flowers.

Still one once great as pollen showers,

now dares gamble on pollen’s power.

 

Quickly now, then, let’s turn to sea.

For the other so great, now I do see,

shall soon lose value across the deep

once her pretty petals with guilders flee.