Or when, after the fatal lock has been severed,
“Then flashed the living lightning from her eyes,
And screams of horror rend the affrighted skies,
Not louder shrieks to pitying Heaven are cast
When husbands or when lapdogs breathe their last
Or when rich china-vessels, fallen from high,
In glittering dust and painted fragments lie!”
And so, when the conflict begins:—
“Now Jove suspends his golden scales in air;
Weighs the men’s wits against the ladies’ hair;
The doubtful beam long nods from side to side;
At length the wits mount up, the hairs subside.”
But more than the wit and fancy, I think, the perfect keeping of the poem deserves admiration. Except a touch of grossness, here and there, there is the most pleasing harmony in all the conceptions and images. The punishments which he assigns to the sylphs who neglect their duty are charmingly appropriate and ingenious:—
“Whatever spirit, careless of his charge,
His post neglects, or leaves the fair at large,
Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o’ertake his sins;
Be stopped in vials or transfixed with pins,
Or plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie,
Or wedged whole ages in a bodkin’s eye;
Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain,
While clogged he beats his silver wings in vain;
Or alum styptics with contracting power,
Shrink his thin essence like a rivelled flower;
Or as Ixion fixed the wretch shall feel
The giddy motion of the whirling wheel,
In fumes of burning chocolate, shall glow,
And tremble at the sea that froths below!”
The speech of Thalestris, too, with its droll climax, is equally good:—
“Methinks already I your tears survey,
Already hear the horrid things they say,
Already see you a degraded toast,
And all your honor in a whisper lost!
How shall I then your helpless fame defend?
’Twill then be infamy to seem your friend!
And shall this prize, the inestimable prize,
Exposed through crystal to the gazing eyes,
And heightened by the diamond’s circling rays,
On that rapacious hand forever blaze?
Sooner shall grass in Hydepark Circus grow,
And wits take lodging in the sound of Bow,
Sooner let earth, air, sea, in chaos fall,
Men, monkeys, lapdogs, parrots, perish all!”
So also Belinda’s account of the morning omens:—
“’Twas this the morning omens seemed to tell;
Thrice from my trembling hand the patch-box fell;
The tottering china shook without a wind;
Nay, Poll sat mute, and Shock was most unkind.”