Nor yet did the Heiress herself omit
The arts that help to make a hit,
And preserve a prominent station,
She talk’d and laugh’d far more than her share;
And took a part in “Rich and Rare
Were the gems she wore”—and the gems were there
Like a Song with an Illustration.
She even stood up with a Count of France
To dance—alas!—the measures we dance
When Vanity plays the Piper!
Vanity, Vanity, apt to betray,
And lead all sorts of legs astray,
Wood, or metal, or human clay,—
Since Satan first play’d the Viper!
But first she doff’d her hunting gear,
And favour’d Tom Tug with her golden spear
To row with down the river—
A Bonze had her golden bow to hold;
A Hermit her belt and bugle of gold;
And an Abbot her golden quiver.
And then a space was clear’d on the floor,
And she walk’d the Minuet de la Cour,
With all the pomp of a Pompadour,
But although she began andante,
Conceive the faces of all the Rout,
When she finished off with a whirligig bout,
And the Precious Leg stuck stiffly out
Like the leg of a Figuranté.
So the courtly dance was goldenly done,
And golden opinions, of course, it won
From all different sorts of people—
Chiming, ding-dong, with flattering phrase,
In one vociferous peal of praise,
Like the peal that rings on Royal days
From Loyalty’s parish-steeple.
And yet, had the leg been one of those
That danced for bread in flesh-colour’d hose,
With Rosina’s pastoral bevy,
The jeers it had met,—the shouts! the scoff!
The cutting advice to “take itself off,”
For sounding but half so heavy.
Had it been a leg like those, perchance,
That teach little girls and boys to dance,
To set, poussette, recede, and advance,
With the steps and figures most proper,—
Had it hopp’d for a weekly or quarterly sum,
How little of praise or grist would have come
To a mill with such a hopper!
But the Leg was none of those limbs forlorn—
Bartering capers and hops for corn—
That meet with public hisses and scorn,
Or the morning journal denounces—
Had it pleased to caper from morn till dusk,
There was all the music of “Money Musk”
In its ponderous bangs and bounces.
But hark;—as slow as the strokes of a pump,
Lump, thump!
Thump, lump!
As the Giant of Castle Otranto might stump,
To a lower room from an upper—
Down she goes with a noisy dint,
For taking the crimson turban’s hint,
A noble Lord at the Head of the Mint
Is leading the Leg to supper!
But the supper, alas! must rest untold,
With its blaze of light and its glitter of gold,
For to paint that scene of glamour,
It would need the Great Enchanter’s charm
Who waves over Palace, and Cot, and Farm,
An arm like the Goldbeater’s Golden Arm
That wields a Golden Hammer.