A Sword And A Rose And A Cape - 1961 Original Broadway Cast Recording (1989 Remastered)

In me you see a relic
Of a long-lamented age
When masculine behavior
Wrote a grand romantic page
With every man a lover
Like a hero on a stage

With a sword and a rose and a cape
Where are the great romantics
Who would languish for a rose?
Who fought a duel with one hand
While the other hand wrote prose?
Who'd scale milady's balcony
And swung upon her drape?
With a sword and a rose and a cape

They have flown
Have flown like ashes
Ah, they reappear in flashes
(But they find themselves contrary to the point)

These aristocrats and highbrows
Meet with such astonished eyebrows
(They endeavor, proudly wither and for rot)

Where are the flaming Frenchmen
And the seething Viennese?
In Spain today they'll hug a horse
And let a mistress freeze
And now the male Italian just gets passionate for cheese
Ah, the sword and the rose and the cape

And so if when I look at you
I flutter like a moth (ah)
It's just that I am of the breed
And woven from a cloth (ah)
Of men who live to fight a duel
Or plight a lover's troth

A man who would twine her hair
Or peel milady's grape
Leap from her balcony
And glorious escape
(Play on her harpsichord and perpetrate her rape)
Perpetrate a rape!
(With a sword) Ahaha
(And a rose) Oh, hey
(And a cape)
(Ole!)