Not bad as a pun. I wil expect you before two on Tuesday. I am well and happy, tell E.
[Moxon subsequently published his Sonnets, in two parts, one of which was dedicated to his brother and one to Wordsworth. There are several to his wife, so that it is difficult to identify that in which the last lines were to be altered. Mrs. Moxon's first album was an extract book in which Lamb had copied a number of old ballads and other poems.
I quote one of Moxon's many sonnets to Emma Moxon:—
Fair art thou as the morning, my young Bride!
Her freshness is about thee; like a river
To the sea gliding with sweet murmur ever
Thou sportest; and, wherever thou dost glide,
Humanity a livelier aspect wears.
Fair art thou as the morning of that land
Where Tuscan breezes in his youth have fanned
Thy grandsire oft. Thou hast not many tears,
Save such as pity from the heart will wring,
And then there is a smile in thy distress!
Meeker thou art than lily of the spring,
Yet is thy nature full of nobleness!
And gentle ways, that soothe and raise me so,
That henceforth I no worldly sorrow know!
"Heigh-ho! Little Barrow!" I cannot identify this acquaintance.
"Knowles's play"—"The Wife." Prologued by Lamb too.
"At Chatteris." I cannot say who were the teetotal, or abstinent,
Philistines.
"Mary's birthday." Mary Lamb would be sixty-nine on December 3, 1833.
Lamb's verses to Miss Brown seem to be no longer preserved. Mr. Hazlitt prints a letter to a Miss Frances Brown, wherein Lamb offers the verses, adding "I hope your sweetheart's name is WHITE. Else it would spoil all. May be 'tis BLACK. Then we must alter it. And may your fortunes BLACKEN with your name.">[