Enter Philander.
PHILANDER.
I.
Sobriety, cease to be sober, [56b]
Cease, Labour, to dig and to delve;
All hail to this tenth of October,
One thousand eight hundred and twelve! [57]
Ha! whom do my peepers remark?
’Tis Hebe with Jupiter’s jug;
O no, ’tis the pride of the Park,
Fair Lady Elizabeth Mugg.
II.
Why, beautiful nymph, do you close
The curtain that fringes your eye?
Why veil in the clouds of repose
The sun that should brighten our sky?
Perhaps jealous Venus has oiled
Your hair with some opiate drug,
Not choosing her charms should be foiled
By Lady Elizabeth Mugg.
III.
But ah! why awaken the blaze
Those bright burning-glasses contain,
Whose lens with concentrated rays
Proved fatal to old Drury Lane?
’Twas all accidental, they cry,—
Away with the flimsy humbug!
’Twas fired by a flash from the eye
Of Lady Elizabeth Mugg.
IV.
Thy glance can in us raise a flame,
Then why should old Drury be free?
Our doom and its doom are the same,
Both subject to beauty’s decree.
No candles the workmen consumed
When deep in the ruins they dug;
Thy flash still their progress illumed,
Sweet Lady Elizabeth Mugg.