HORACE SURPASSED.
How funny ’tis, when pretty lads and lasses
Meet altogether, just to have a caper,
And the black fiddler plays you such a tune as
Sets you a frisking.
High bucks and ladies, standing in a row all,
Make finer show than troops of continentals.
Balance and foot it, rigadoon and chasse,
Brimful of rapture.
Thus poets tell us how one Mister Orpheus
Led a rude forest to a contra-dance, and
Play’d the brisk tune of Yankee Doodle on a
New Holland fiddle.
Spruce our gallants are, essenced with pomatum,
Heads powder’d white as Killington-Peak snowstorm;[128]
Ladies, how brilliant, fascinating creatures,
But now behold a sad reverse of fortune,
Life’s brightest scenes are checker’d with disaster,
Clumsy Charles Clumpfoot treads on Tabby’s gown, and
Tears all the tail off!
Stop, stop the fiddler, all away this racket—
Hartshorn and water! See the ladies fainting,
Paler than primrose, fluttering about like
Pigeons affrighted!
Not such the turmoil, when the sturdy farmer
Sees turbid whirlwinds beat his oats and rye down,
And the rude hail-stones, big as pistol-bullets,
Dash in his windows!
Willy Wagnimble dancing with Flirtilla,
Almost as light as air-balloon inflated,
Rigadoons round her, ’till the lady’s heart is
Forced to surrender.
Benny Bamboozle cuts the drollest capers,
Just like a camel, or a hippopot’mus,
Jolly Jack Jumble makes as big a rout as
See Angelina lead the mazy dance down,
Never did fairy trip it so fantastic;
How my heart flutters, while my tongue pronounces
Sweet little seraph!
Such are the joys, that flow from contra-dancing,
Pure as the primal happiness of Eden,
Love, mirth, and music, kindle in accordance
Raptures extatic.
SONG.[129]
When cannons roar, when bullets fly,
And shouts and groans affright the sky,
Amid the battle’s dire alarms,
I’ll think, my Mary, on thy charms;
The crimson field
Fresh proof shall yield
Of thy fond soldier’s love;
And thy dear form
In battle’s storm
His guardian angel prove.
Should dangers thicken all around,
And dying warriors strew the ground,
In varied shapes, though death appear,
Thy fancied form my soul shall cheer;
The crimson field
Of thy fond soldier’s love;
And thy dear form
In battle’s storm
His guardian angel prove.
And when loud cannons cease to roar,
And when the din of battle’s o’er,
When safe return’d from war’s alarms,
O then I’ll feast on Mary’s charms!
In ecstacy
I’ll fly to thee
My ardent passion prove,
Left glory’s field,
My life I’ll yield
To all the joys of love.