No. 4.—CHLOE'S APPROPRIATION CLAWS.
A ye who bless the wedded state
With tributes born of generous blindness,
Bemourn the fate that well may wait
Your gifted kindness.
My CHLOE's ultra-modern mind
Transforms your Dresden's grace and Chelsea's,
The toys for special use designed,
To something else's.
For CHLOE reads each weekly print,
Where Art's resource is blent with Scandal's,
Where decorative females hint
Their cure for Vandals.
Your large, expensive Wedgwood bowls,
She bids her "Lor!"-exclaiming waitress
To cram with large, expensive coals,
The pretty traitress!
On daintiest overmantel's ledge
She sets enshrined your prosy platter;
Your salt-cellars she stocks with veg-
etable matter.
And when the Summer comes (if hail
For once not hails the sunny swallows)
Our fenders hold your statues pale
Of chipped Apollos.
With out-of-fashion toilet sets,
Their sprigs of ringstands, bits of boxes,
She picturesques her cabinet's
Quaint heterodoxies.
My blue tobacco-jar she'll hoard
For party-nights, and on the basket
Whereon my manuscripts are stored
Will throne—a casket!
"Ingenious" CHLOE, sure, opines
Is Genius' proper derivation;
"Appropriate" with her defines
Appropriation.
Poor STREPHON, fond, bewildered wight!
He doubts, amazed by changes showy,
If CHLOE's own be STREPHON quite,
Or STREPHON's, CHLOE!