COMING DRESS.
(Sweet Seventeen to the would-be Sumptuary Reformers at the Kensington Town Hall.)
Vainly on Fashion you make war,
With querulous Book, and quaint Bazaar,
Good Ladies of the Higher Light!
A Turkish Tea-gown, loose or tight,
Won't win us to the Rational Cult;
Japanese skirts do but insult
Our elder instincts, to which Reason
Is nothing more nor less than treason.
Your "muddy weather costume" moves us
No more than satire, which reproves us
Ad nauseam, and for whose rebuff
We never care one pinch of snuff.
No, Ladies HARBERTON and COFFIN.
Your pleading, like the critics' "scoffin"
Touches us not; have we not smiled,
Mocking, at Mrs. OSCAR WILDE?
And shall we welcome with delight
Queer robes that make a girl "a fright?"
Pooh-pooh! We're simply imperturbable,
The Reign of Fashion's undisturbable.
The "Coming Dress?"—that's all sheer humming,
We only care for Dress be-Coming!