The independent Miss Kilmansegg
Took off her independent Leg
And laid it beneath her pillow,
And then on the bed her frame she cast,
The time for repose had come at last,
But long, long, after the storm is past
Rolls the turbid, turbulent billow.
No part she had in vulgar cares
That belong to common household affairs—
Nocturnal annoyances such as theirs,
Who lie with a shrewd surmising,
That while they are couchant (a bitter cup!)
Their bread and butter are getting up,
And the coals, confound them, are rising.
No fear she had her sleep to postpone,
Like the crippled Widow who weeps alone
And cannot make a doze her own,
For the dread that mayhap on the morrow,
The true and Christian reading to baulk,
A broker will take up her bed and walk
By way of curing her sorrow.
No cause like these she had to bewail,
But the breath of applause had blown a gale,
And winds from that quarter seldom fail
To cause some human commotion;
But whenever such breezes coincide
With the very spring-tide
Of human pride,
There’s no such swell on the ocean!
Peace, and ease, and slumber lost,
She turn’d, and roll’d, and tumbled and toss’d
With a tumult that would not settle:
A common case, indeed, with such
As have too little, or think too much,
Of the precious and glittering metal.
Gold!—she saw at her golden foot
The Peer whose tree had an olden root,
The Proud, the Great, the Learned to boot,
The handsome, the gay, and the witty—
The Man of Science—of Arms—of Art,
The man who deals but at Pleasure’s mart,
And the man who deals in the City.
Gold, still gold—and true to the mould!
In the very scheme of her dream it told;
For, by magical transmutation,
From her Leg through her body it seem’d to go,
Till, gold above, and gold below,
She was gold, all gold, from her little gold toe
To her organ of Veneration!
And still she retain’d through Fancy’s art,
The Golden Bow and Golden Dart,
With which she had play’d a Goddess’s part,
In her recent glorification:
And still, like one of the self-same brood,
On a Plinth of the self-same metal she stood
For the whole world’s adoration.
And hymns and incense around her roll’d,
From Golden Harps and Censers of Gold,—
For Fancy in dreams is as uncontroll’d
As a horse without a bridle:
What wonder, then, from all checks exempt,
If, inspired by the Golden Leg, she dreamt
She was turn’d to a Golden Idol?