I envied gloves upon her arm I don't object to wealth or land; Some thousands, and a living. Paints screens, subscribes to Sunday-schools, But to be linked for life to her! The desperate man who tried it Might marry a Barometer And hang himself beside it! WHAT are you, Lady ?-nought is here To dub you Whig, or damn you Tory; It is beyond a poet's skill 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: I only feel-you're very pretty. But bless my heart! it's very wrong; And Laura thinks your dress "atrocious;" And Lady Jane, who now and then Is taken for the village steeple, Is sure you can't be four feet ten, Soon pass the praises of a face; Swift fades the very best vermilion ; Fame rides a most prodigious pace ; Oblivion follows on the pillion ; And all who in these sultry rooms To-day have stared, and pushed, and fainted, Will soon forget your pearls and plumes As if they never had been painted. You'll be forgotten-as old debts By persons who are used to borrow ; Forgotten-as the sun that sets, When shines a new one on the morrow; Forgotten-like the luscious peach 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? By Brownie banned, or blessed by Fairy? D 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 you learn how Dido died, And who found out the art of printing? And are you fond of lanes and brooks— Or do you con the little books Which Baron Brougham and Vaux diffuses? Or do you canter down the Row |