She makes silk purses, broiders stools, Paints screens, subscribes to Sunday-schools, And sits a horse divinely. But to be linked for life to her! The desperate man who tried it Might marry a Barometer EVERY-DAY CHARACTERS V PORTRAIT OF A LADY IN THE EXHIBITION OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY WHAT are you, Lady?—nought is here To dub you Whig, or damn you Tory; To form the slightest notion, whether We e'er shall walk through one quadrille, Or look upon one moon together. You're very pretty!—all the world Are talking of your bright brow's splendour, And of your locks, so softly curled, And of your hands, so white and slender; Some think you're blooming in Bengal; Some say you're blowing in the city; Some know you're nobody at all: But bless my heart! it's very wrong; And Laura thinks your dress "atrocious;" Is sure you can't be four feet ten, Soon pass the praises of a face; Swift fades the very best vermillion; To-day have stared, and pushed, and fainted, Will soon forget your pearls and plumes, You'll be forgotten-as old debts When shines a new one on the morrow; That blessed the schoolboy last September; Forgotten-like a maiden speech, Which all men praise, but none remember. Yet, ere you sink into the stream That whelms alike sage, saint, and martyr, And soldier's sword, and minstrel's theme, And Canning's wit, and Gatton's charter, Here, of the fortunes of your youth, My fancy weaves her dim conjectures, Was 't in the north or in the south That summer breezes rocked your cradle ? And had you in your baby mouth A wooden or a silver ladle ? And was your first unconscious sleep And were you christened Maud or Mary? And was your father called "your grace"? Her brave forefathers wore at Hastings? Where were you finished? tell me where! Of books and backboard, harp and physic? And did they bid you banish pride, And mind your Oriental tinting? And did you learn how Dido died, And who found out the art of printing? |