AN EARNEST LOVE LETTER.
To the Editor of the Comic Almanack.
Good Master Rigdum Funnidos,
I am incurably in love with a young lady, residing in the country, but have reason to think, from what passed between us at our last interview, that she has some misgivings respecting my fidelity. I therefore beg you will insert these lines in your Almanack, which, as it circulates everywhere, will show everybody that my intentions are strictly honourable.
Yours,
Greatly obliged, &c.,
Phil. Philomel.
Oh! why these cruel taunts throw out,
And say you cease to love me;
Or my affection that you doubt?
By all the stars above me,
I am not false—yet, since I fear
To meet a flat rejection,
I'll tell you when you may, with cause,
Mistrust my fond affection:
When trains from Railway termini
Start off at the same hour
Two weeks together, then begin
To doubt your beauty's power;
Or, when embankments cease to fall,
Or boilers to explode,
Or engines to run off the line,
You may some change forbode:
When shrimps are caught at Putney Bridge,
And gudgeons at Herne Bay,
When the Thames Tunnel clears enough
Its shareholders to pay;
Or, when Thorwaldsen's "Byron" stands
In Westminster's old Abbey,
You may, with truth, begin to think
My conduct rather shabby:
When Autumn tourists cease to roam
To Switzerland or Baden;
Or when the lessees fortunes make
At "Drury," or "The Garden;"
When busses move along the Strand
As fast as you can walk—
Then think my words no longer true,
My vows of love all talk:
But, until then, I swear by all
The topics of the year—
The corn laws, sugar, opium, tea,
Lin, Elliott, and Napier.—
By D'Aumale's fortunate escape,
And Marie, "femme Laffarge,"
Who writes as well within her cell
As if she were at large:
Or by Napoleon's catafalque,
'Midst such grand rites erected
(Although it made not half the stir
The French King had expected);
By the dim last declining rays
Of weather-doom'd Vauxhall,
Or by Cerito's masquerade,
Which ne'er took place at all:—
By all these things, and many more
Which I've no time to write
(Because the various mail-trains start
At half-past eight each night),
I swear again, to prove most true,
And every vow fulfil,
Till fashion's idlers quit Hyde Park,
And lounge on Tower Hill.