With an ugly, unclean nest,
And a very, very long bill.”
Whittier’s Impromptu
John G. Whittier often wrote impromptu verses in albums and elsewhere, bright with a gayety that does not often appear in his more important works. In the album of a young lady—who with her friends had been rallying him on his bachelorhood—he wrote the following lines:
Ah, ladies, you love to levy a tax
On my poor little paper parcel of fame;
Yet strange it seems that among you all
Not one is willing to take my name—
To write and rewrite, till the angels pity her,
The weariful words, Thine truly, Whittier.